Online Rights’ Withdrawal and Collective Management – Harmonizing the Online Music Rights Withdrawals for a Trans-Atlantic Streaming Economy

A seamless movement of copyright holders’ music rights between various licensing entities (such as collective management organisations - CMOs) should be ensured in order to honour the broad freedom of rightholders to manage their rights, but also to enable smooth licensing for users (such as online music services). In the European Union (EU), since the GEMA II case in the 1970s, rightholders have been gradually allowed to mandate CMOs with administration and licensing of rights based on categories of rights, which refer to the means of exploitation of copyright protected works. With the advent of online exploitation of music, rightholders became increasingly interested in withdrawing rights along the lines of categories of rights from CMOs and administering these rights either individually or via a different CMO. However, categories of rights have been defined by CMOs on a national level and thus not harmonised. Formulation of categories of rights only reflects the interests of rightholders and CMOs, but not licensees. This means that the movement of rights and smooth licensing for users is hampered. A look at the U.S. system of music rights licensing reveals that licensees’ interests are taken into account when formulating scope of licenses as well as rightholders withdrawal rights from collective management, thus allowing for a less complex licensing process. This chapter discusses possibilities for a harmonized approach to withdrawal right/ categories of rights in the EU. Such an approach has a potential to provide a seamless movement of music rights between licensing entities and enable streamlined licensing for online music services not only within EU, but also in the trans-Atlantic environment