All for One, One for All: The Future of Collective Management in Copyright

Our panelists will address the future of collective management in the digital age in the context of developments in Canada, the United States and other jurisdictions. After almost a century of relative stability, Canada’s system of collectively managing copyright has experienced a shake-up in recent years. Changes to the Copyright Act no longer require tariffs to be filed for the public performance of musical works, opening up the option of either proposing tariffs of general application or entering into direct licensing agreements with users or groups of users, while the Supreme Court of Canada has held that an approved tariff is not necessarily binding on a user. In the United States, the Music Modernization Act points to a move in a different direction with the creation of a new agency that would establish blanket royalty rates used to pay the composers and lyricists for the use of musical works by streaming services.