RE: Russian artists copyright collective?

There are other collective rights agencies in Russia besides RAO. The one I know of is COPYRUS ( http://www.copyrus.org.ru/ , with some data given at http://www.ifrro.org/show.aspx?pageid=members/rro/copyrus ). It is my understanding that Russian copyright law clearly states that collective rights societies have the authority to grant permission without contacting individual rightsholders (going beyond typical "blanket authority" given to such agencies in other countries), which has led to a proliferation of such agencies in Russia. However, Russian copyright law is being revised right now to eliminate this loophole:

http://www.ustr.gov/assets/Document_Library/Fact_Sheets/2006/asset_upload_file151_9980.pdf

So I don't know which collective rights agency (if any!) will survive the new legislation.

Kevin Hawkins
http://www.umich.edu/~kshawkin/ Received on Thu Jan 04 2007 - 01:54:59 GMT