Ricolfi, Marco --- "Individual and collective management of copyright in a digital environment" [2007] ELECD 304; in Torremans, Paul (ed), "Copyright Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Copyright Law

Editor(s): Torremans, Paul

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845424879

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Individual and collective management of copyright in a digital environment

Author(s): Ricolfi, Marco

Number of pages: 32

Extract:

12 Individual and collective management of
copyright in a digital environment
Marco Ricolfi1



Introduction
What does the future hold for the collective administration of copyright and
related rights in a digital environment? Certainly, at the moment the legal and
organisational landscape in this area is rapidly changing, particularly in the
European Union and in the Member States.2 At times, it even appears that in
the long run collective rights management and collective rights management
organisations (CRMOs) might end up being altogether displaced from the
digital environment. Indeed, according to some observers, the alternative to
CRMOs consists of technology-based tools, usually described as digital rights
management (DRM). As DRM enables rightholders to individually monitor
and meter the use of copyright protected works, resort to it would ultimately
make CRMOs redundant. According to a different school of thought, however,
the future alternative to collective management is to be found in the opposite
direction, or, more specifically, in the setting up of levy-based neo-regulatory
devices, such as a mechanism sometimes described as a `governmentally
administered reward system' which, in the long run, would phase out copy-
right in the entertainment sector.
Thus CRMOs, which since the second half of the nineteenth century have
made a remarkable contribution to the advancement of culture and to the
progress of the media industries in our societies and until the present day have
managed to remain powerful organisations, are currently subject to a strong
wind of change.
To understand why this is so, ...