Collective administration of copyright royalties

In October 2005, following an earlier study, the European Commission published a Recommendation to promote easier cross-border licensing of online music within the European Union. Although the Recommendation does not make any binding legislative proposals, it nevertheless encourages the elimination of territorial restrictions and customer allocation provisions for existing licensing contracts.

The recommendation includes provisions on:

• Governance
• Transparency
• dispute settlement
• accountability of collective rights managers.

The Commission will monitor progress towards these aims and has the option of proposing legislation at a later date.