Digitalisation has left a huge impact on the music industry and copyright rules. In practice, copyright trading is often impacted by legal, practical, and territorial barriers. Traditional copyright laws operate at the domestic level, in contrast to the digital environment where geographical boundaries do not seem to apply. Being a key role in the music industry, music creators need international protection of their rights due to their weak position of bargaining power and limited abilities to control the massive use of their works.
This project focuses on the above challenges and discusses the two main issues of international music copyright protection, the territorial boundaries of current legal frameworks and the cooperation between copyright management organisations (CMOs). A certain amount of research has been conducted during the short research stay, including searching for resources on databases, communicating with other academics in intellectual property and competition, and drafting notes.
It has been shown that territorial boundaries of copyright legal framework commonly exist in most countries. There have been huge efforts in working on a solution to regulate international music uses. For instance, the Directive on Collective Management of Copyright and Related Rights and Multi-territorial Licensing and the Collective Management of Copyright Regulations 2016 set out outlines of cross-border music licensing in Europe. However, these rules only cover most of the states in the European Union. These rules have limited functions to assist with international music consumption outside Europe, such as in Asia-Pacific and North America.
Collective management organisations in practice also try to explore a global music management system. The International Standard Musical Work Code ('ISWC') developed by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers indicate an improvement in storing the information of musical works on a global level. ISWC is used to set up unique codes for musical works. However, the function and technical settings of ISWC still cannot meet the need for the uses and licences of music copyright. Specifically, ISWC doesn’t have all the information needed for all musical works. The incorrect and incomplete information stored also affect the efficiency of the ISWC operation.
To meet the changes and challenges brought by digital technology, the debates on this topic would continue. It is significant to explore if copyright, as a legal right, should be changed to a right of remuneration. It is uncertain if such a change would benefit music creators, or, if it may not solve the problem. It is also critical to review how the current cooperation modes of CMOs can be improved to effectively assist with global music copyright licensing.
