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

Unclaimed royalties are held for five years, then returned to the revenue pool and distributed according to the distributionschedule of radio broadcasters. This is a guideline provided by CISAC.Investments by collecting societies: In its Annual Report of 2009, ABRAMUS, in its audited statement reported short-terminvestments in the Money Market of BRL 10.042.517. Such investment only exists between receiving and paying outroyalties. All property owned is used for the purpose of accommodating staff and operations.Associations distribute international royalties according to the reciprocal agreements they have with foreign societies and therepertoire information given to them by radio broadcasters. ABRAMUS, one of 10 societies, claims to run a sophisticatedsystem that enables it to represent Brazilian creators abroad as well as international authors, publishers, performers andproducers in Brazil.In 2008, ABRAMUS signed representation agreements with 28 foreign societies (51 signed agreements, 39 unilateral and 12bilateral). In the ABRAMUS Magazine, 2nd Edition, 2009, ABRAMUS claimed to have the only system in Brazil that couldspeed up payments to members. The organisation has connected with the databases of international services such as IPI(the most important of the authors’ rights sector). ABRAMUS was developing a program to enable them to use SDEG (forneighbouring rights) and CRD (author rights) formats. This would make their access to CIS-NET and Grix quicker. Such anintegrated system would speed up payments to members. Currently, 62 international associations have agreements withABRAMUS, which will become more effective in identifying Brazilian artists and their works. They would be enabled to collectsums owed for public performance of artistic work and pass them on to ABRAMUS for payment in Brazil.With regard to the flow of royalties to foreign countries, ABRAMUS represents 26 foreign societies and various internationalartists including Paul McCartney, Britney Spears, Madonna and Robbie Williams. ABRAMUS acquired its positive image byattending events bringing together the world’s main author and neighbouring rights societies.Work with foreign societies on neighbouring rights in ABRAMUS began in 2006. This work required of them to separateauthors and neighbouring rights, since no other country had a joint collective management system of author andneighbouring rights. They adopted a new format in mid-2007. Since then they have been learning how the exchangebetween societies of neighbouring rights functions. They worked closely with partner societies, PPL (UK) and SENA (theNetherlands).In 2009, ABRAMUS received a total of BRL111 880,44 from abroad, made up of amounts from (Annual Report, ABRAMUS,2009): AIE (BRL52 041,39), GRAMEX (BRL2 053,71), PPL (BRL2 921,40), SAMI (BRL509,40), SENA (BRL38 094,18), and The Sound Exchange (BRL16 260,36).Other international projects identified by ABRAMUS were to improve contact with Latin American societies and to integratewith the International Performers Database (IPD), a worldwide database of artists and their membership agreements.- 127 -