Our world is enriched by the contributions of authors and publishers. Original works are protected by copyright in order that creators and copyright owners can be fairly compensated for their contributions.
Collective Management Organisations, or CMOs, represent copyright owners and to help promote their interests. For any copyrighted work, the copyright owner has the exclusive right to carry out certain acts in relation to the work. The copyright owner may license others to carry out these acts through licence agreements. CMOs have the mandate from copyright owners – who are their members – to take on the following roles:
– administer licenses to copyright users on behalf of their members
– collect and distribute royalties to members
For rightsholders, CMOs eliminate the need to deal with a multitude of individual users. For users of copyrighted materials, CMOs operate as a one-stop shop and eliminate the need to approach multiple rightsholders for the necessary licences.
For example, CLASS represents authors and publishers in Singapore who are the owners of copyright in literary and dramatic works. CLASS is mandated by these rightsholders to grant licences on their behalf, to allow licensees to copy and communicate to the public copyrighted works. This way, CLASS licensees only need to take up a single licence and make a single payment in order to obtain a licence in relation to all the works in CLASS’s repertoire.
Are you interested to learn about how CLASS can address the issues for both authors, publishers and copyright users alike?
Get in touch with us at (+65) 62235521 or info@class-singapore.com to find out more!
