Extending the benefits of collective licensing
Read the full outcome
Detail of outcome
As a result of the consultation process, the government intends to amend the secondary legislation to take account of certain issues raised by stakeholders. These include:
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changing the membership consent threshold, so that the collecting society must provide evidence in its application that it has the informed consent of a substantial proportion of its voting members
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the addition of provisions about the renewal of an authorisation and the evidence needed for it
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additional details about the process for reviewing authorisations after renewal
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some amendments to the opt out provisions
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how undistributed monies will be used
These amendments are being scrutinised in a revised draft currently before the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments (JCSI).
The government intends to publish the final Regulations and Explanatory Memorandum, and draft legal guidance, when they are laid before Parliament in summer 2014.
Feedback received
Detail of feedback received
We have published 35 individual responses we received in response to our consultation. There were two confidential responses.
Original consultation
Consultation description
Extended Collective Licensing (ECL) is a type of licensing that allows an authorised collecting society to extend an existing collective licence so that it can license on behalf of all rights holders in the sector, except those who opt out. While traditional collective licensing relies on rights holders opting in by giving the collecting society express permission to license their works, ECL assumes that rights holders want their works to be licensed, unless they opt out.
ECL is one of the measures the government is introducing to simplify the licensing system. Along with several other measures in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, it will help make copyright licensing more efficient and remove unnecessary barriers to the legitimate use of works, while preserving the interests of right holders.
This technical consultation is on the draft secondary legislation, to be known as The Copyright (Extended Collective Licensing) Regulations. The government is inviting respondents to submit substantive comments on the legal effectiveness, structure and effect of the regulations only. The policy is out of scope of this consultation.
This consultation is aimed at all interested parties across all sectors including:
- collecting societies
- authors and creators
- users of collective licences.