Collective rights management

Collective rights management is the licensing of copyright and related rights by organisations acting on behalf of rights owners. Collective management organisations, such as collecting societies, typically represent groups of copyright and related rights owners, such as authors, composers, publishers, writers, photographers, musicians and performers. At the least, copyright owners authorize collective rights management organizations to monitor the use of their works, negotiate licenses with prospective users, collect remuneration for use of copyrighted works, ensuring a fair distribution of such remuneration amongst copyright owners. Governmental Supervision varies across jurisdictions, from being limited to anti-trust regulation in the United States to sectoral regulators in jurisdictions like the EU, India. Collective rights management is almost as old as copyright law itself. Collective rights management through a collecting society first occurred in France in 1777 for the use of dramatic and literary works in theatre, attributed to the efforts of Pierre Beaumarchais. The first collecting society and collective rights management in music was established in 1850 in France.