Does musician contact each radio station to give permission to use? Or what is a collective rights management organization?
Individual management of copyright and related rights holders is difficult or impossible today.
It is difficult to imagine a situation in which, for example, a musician must contact each radio station in order to give permission to use. That is why the legislators decided to facilitate the specified system and consolidate the provisions on the collective management of copyright and related rights by the relevant organizations.
The collective management organization carries out the process of managing the rights transferred by the right holders. All copyright holders can be members of the organization. It should be noted that membership can only be on a voluntary basis. Based on information received from members, the organization monitors the use of works and calculates the remuneration due to authors. An example of such a collective organization is the non-profit organization “ArmAuthor” established on the territory of the Republic of Armenia in order to protect rights in the field of intellectual activity.
According to the legislation of the Republic of Armenia, in particular, Copyright and Related rights law in situations with impossibility to individually manage property rights, the author must transfer such right to an organization based on collective management. The main functions of the organization are to conclude license agreements with users for the use of objects of copyright and related rights, collect remuneration, conclude agreements on mutual protection with similar organizations operating in foreign countries and other functions specified in the law.
It is also worth to note that in the Republic of Armenia, on a collective emphasizing: public performance communication to the public, reproduction by audio recording, broadcasting and rebroadcasting, management of property rights in cable transmission and retransmission.
Thus, this mechanism is triggered by the fact that the copyright holder is not able to exercise continuous control over the use of his work. For this reason, on the basis of national legislation, the right holder transfers the authority to manage his property rights to the collective management organization. In the interests of the copyright holder, licenses for the use of works for both non-commercial and commercial purposes are issued. The organization collects and distributes funds among member copyright holders and simplifies their lives.