Copyright Review Commission Report - ICT Law and Regulation ...

The implementation of this law led to the present two-tier system existing in Brazil. ECAD shall be referred to, in thisdocument, as a collecting society, while the copyright societies shall be called Collective Management Associations (CMA).1.4.3. STRUCTURE OF ECADECAD is a non-profit civil institution created exclusively to meet the needs of the associations. ECAD is run by a GeneralAssembly, which consists of managing directors of the different associations responsible for the public performance of music.ECAD, with its headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, has 25 collecting units, 780 employees, 45 lawyers, 130 service providersand 130 autonomous agencies as service providers located in all Brazilian states. It has a fully centralised computerisedsystem, which has 342 000 owners of works registered with 2,4 million works and 862 000 phonograms, which account for allregistered versions of each song. The music users of copyright works total 418 000 in the register of ECAD (Annual Report,ABRAMUS, 2009).The General Assembly meets every month. Its decisions are taken through voting, which are weighted according to themarket share of each society. However, most decisions are taken by consensus (Gloria Braga, interview, May 2011).The ECAD collects, whereas the association acts as a bridge, supplying information to ECAD (Gustav Gonsales interview,ABRAMUS, May 2011). The associations are responsible for documenting the repertoire of their represented rights holders inthe database of ECAD, centralising information of the rights holders from all associations.The amounts fixed on ECAD’s price list correspond to different types of user and usage. The user is any individual orcompany who uses music through public broadcast. The amount of money collected by ECAD (minus 25% administrativecosts) is passed on to the copyright owners.Brazil does not have one society per right, but rather there is one bureau that collects for all 10 associations and distributesto all the constituent associations on the basis of their repertoires.According to Ms Barbosa, Director of Intellectual Property Office in the Ministry of Culture, CMAs in Brazil are different fromthose in other countries, because they have composers, record companies, performers and authors all in one association(Ms Barbosa, Director of Intellectual Property, Ministry of Culture, interview, June 2011).There is no limit to the number of CMAs that can exist simultaneously. The minimum requirements for setting up a collectingsociety are determined by Civil Law and the only other requirement is that they must have rights holders as members.1.5. EFFECTIVENESS OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE ASSOCIATIONS CONCERNINGDISTRIBUTION OF AUTHORS’ RIGHTSIn terms of effectiveness, the existence of a central structure for collections allows for the associations to act consensually interms of setting tariffs and distribution. This rules out competition among the different associations on the basis of tariffscharged to users. With the collection function off their hands, CMAs have greater capacity to improve their data-capturingsystems (developing their own software) and training their staff to provide good service to their members.- 124 -