The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) strongly protests the complete lack of any positive developments related to solving of disputes between collective organizations for protection of copyright and related rights and the electronic media in Serbia.
The Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) strongly protests the complete lack of any positive developments related to solving of disputes between collective organizations for protection of copyright and related rights and the electronic media in Serbia.
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Regardless of the fact that the Government of the Republic of Serbia has appointed on December 9, 2010 the president and members of the Commission for Copyright and Related Rights, which is supposed to give its opinion on the tariffs of collective organizations, the Commission has not yet delivered to ANEM – as a representative association of broadcasters – any request for opinion on proposed tariffs, in accordance with the Law on Copyright and Related Rights, thus effectively delaying the implementation of the Law that has been adopted as far back as the end of 2009.
In the meantime, the Organization of Phonogram Producers of Serbia (OFPS) and the Serbian Music Authors’ Organization (SOKOJ) have initiated several dozen court proceedings against the media. These proceedings are being initiated completely arbitrarily and without any analysis of their justifiability, usually without a single phone call to media as users, even those who had been regularly paying the fees to collective organizations for many years.
At the moment, several legal proceedings against ANEM members are ongoing. One of the more drastic examples is of our member from the city of Nis who has been sued and required to pay the fee in the amount of 4% of its total revenue for the entire year of 2008, although the 4% tariff has been revoked in May 2008 and a new tariff set to not more than 3% of total revenue.
At the same time, dozens of directors of stations in Serbia are being questioned in commercial offense proceedings related to the Law on Copyright and Related Rights due to alleged failure to deliver envelopes with lists of aired music. These proceedings have also been initiated by OFPS, who has sent a large number of complaints to the Republic Broadcasting Agency. The RBA has forwarded these complaints to the Republic Prosecutor’s Office.
To make things even more bizarre, the OFPS claims that the envelopes have not been delivered using the form published on their web site, although the tariff adopted by the Managing Board of OFPS – which is still in force and is the only document, published in the Official Gazette, that prescribes the manner of delivery of envelopes – stipulates that the delivery of envelopes using OFPS’ forms is only one of the possible ways to deliver them, but certainly not the only one.
Due to these actions of SOKOJ and OFPS, ANEM demands – in its own name, in the name of its members, and in the name of all commercial broadcasters in Serbia that ANEM has represented in negotiations with SOKOJ and OFPS – that the Intellectual Property Office, as a body authorized to oversee the activities of collective organizations, and the Republic Broadcasting Agency, as the regulator of this sector, take urgent steps to protect media in Serbia from arbitrariness of OFPS.