/ Who is entitled to collect authorship rights?
Law No. 9,610/98, also known as the “Brazilian Copyrights Law,” authorizes entities representing copyright owners to collect authorship rights on behalf of their associates.
However, the Brazilian Copyrights Law entitles only entities which are legally accredited by the Federal Public Administration[1]. As the Ministry of Culture is extinct, the Special Secretariat of Culture, linked to the Ministry of Tourism, is the current accreditation agency.
Recently, “music lives” have become more popular during the Covid-19 pandemic, and two entities have become more prominent in the music industry:
- the Central Collection and Distribution Office (“Ecad”), comprised by 7 associations,[2] and responsible for the collection and distribution of authorship rights linked to public music performances[3]; and
- the Brazilian Union of Music Producers (“Ubem”), the agency authorized to collect and distribute, on behalf of music producers, authorship rights from songs played to advertise brands, services or products.
/ Ecad
Ecad is the main Brazilian authorship rights’ collection and distribution agency for public performance of music. Public performance, according to the Brazilian Copyrights Law, is “any music composition or music arrangements played with the participation of artists […] or the performance of phonograms and audiovisual works in public places …”[4], such as, radio broadcasting or any transmission through any means, including movies.
Recently, the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (“STJ”) ruled[5] that the internet is a public place, and streaming is a form of public performance protected by authorship rights. Thus, we can infer that the STJ court understands that authorship rights are due on works published on the Internet in real time – livestreaming, commonly known as “lives”.
As there are different types of music performances, Ecad established different collection criterion. “Webcasting“[6] was included in the category “on demand” and “mixed content”.
However, in view of the great success of sponsored music lives in mid-2020, Ecad announced, in June 2020, a new duty, estimated on the lives’ sponsorship amount, and payable by the platforms sponsoring the brands/promoters of the event[7] .
It is called “Transmission of Music Events on the Internet”, and it includes lives which are simultaneously broadcasted[8], and the rate is 7.5% on the gross revenue from the show[9] . The agency announced that until December 30, 2020 the rate is 5%.
/ Ubem
When Ecad published the new duty on the lives, it mentioned another agency, Ubem, still unknown to many.
Ubem informed, at the time, that it would also start collecting authorship rights from songs played to advertise brands, services or products during sponsored music lives. The temporary rate would be 5%, charged on the advertising/promotion revenue from each sponsored live[10], similar to Ecad. However, the rate for December 2020 onwards was not informed.
We have submitted a consultation to the Secretariat of Culture[11] asking what entities are legally entitled to collect authorship rights, but it did not mention Ubem. We have sent an inquiry to Ubem, but so far they have not responded.
