Sino-Dutch CMO's Will Include Mechanical Rights In Reciprocity Agreement This Year

I got hold of the chapters about the East Asian Countries by Ang Kwee Tiang of Collective Management And Related Rights edited by professor Daniel Gervais of University of Ottowa. Very interesting.

Today, I spoke to Buma-Stemra, the Dutch CMO (Collective Management Organisation), who has a reciprocity agreement with the Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC), to see what happens when for example a song of the Dutch repertoire is used by a Chinese broadcaster, without remuneration. Johan Visser, of the legal department of Buma-Stemra, did not know whether this has ever happened. According to Visser Chinese copyright was not well developed so he was not shocked that only 5.000 companies in the whole of China pay for background music, see here.

Visser did not know whether Buma-Stemra or MCSC had ever to enforce their rights in China. However, he knew of one case where a translation was made of a song by Tony Eijk in Dutch which was translated into Chinese and put on CD by the Chinese subsidiary of Nutricia (which is a Dutch food company) as a sales promotion, whithout authorisation. Because the Sino-Dutch reciprocity agreement does not include mechanical rights yet, Buma-Stemra got directly into contact with the Chinese subsidiary, who paid the remunaration. So no real enforcement issue. The real news is that this year mechanical rights will be included in an amended Sino-Dutch reciprocity agreement. The exact date remains unknown yet.