In the digital era, the ubiquity and worldwide scope of distribution networks, the increasing production of multi-media content, the ease and speed of technologically assisted reproduction, and the overall stakes involved have increased both the complexity of and the necessity for effective rights management. The task of licensing and monitoring all types of rights has become more complex as the variety of legitimate uses has multiplied and the amount and value of rights are increasing. In this context, the collecting societies are playing a key role in preserving the key principles of intellectual property, in providing the lawful access to a wide range of copyrighted content and in the management and clearance of digital rights. To this end collecting societies are changing the traditional models of collective management and licensing of rights by developing new systems and exploiting new technologies enabling integrated management of the rights and improving the collection, distribution and monitoring processes implied in their activities.

This workshop aims to present the current collecting societies’ projects and strategies towards digital rights management systems and to explore the impact of new digital deliveries on collective licensing. Thanks to the presence of high-profile experts representing collecting societies of different categories of right holders the workshop will allow addressing the topics of collective management’s issues, policies and aspects from several perspectives. Particular attention will be given to the new services and technological tools developed by collecting societies and to the main legal and practical issues related to the licensing of rights in the domain of cross media content.

• 11.00   Welcome and introduction – Isabella Longo AFI Int’l Coordinator
• 11.10   DRM: approach from the Authors' Collecting Societies - Marc Gauvin, SDAE International Relations (Spain)
• 11.30   Artists rights management: from SIREX project to the DRM – Maila Sansaini General Manager IMAIE (Italy)
• 11.50   Producers rights collective management perspective – Dominic McGonigal Director, Government Relations PPL (UK)
• 12.10   The FastTrack network : overview and aims – Antonio Brunetti SIAE (Italy)
• 12.30   Questions and discussion

Isabella Longo AFI - International coordinator of AFI She is responsible of AFI European and International activities being already involved as project manager in several European projects. Gaining valuable experience in the intellectual property field, including licensing and copyrights issues in the European countries, she is active in supporting all policies and strategies at national and international level aiming at fostering the development of new business models suitable to the independent music sector. Since its foundation in 2003, she has been designated general coordinator of EMCA (European Music Copyright Alliance) alliance of major European collecting societies and organizations founded with the primary goal of promoting at European level common copyright awareness campaigns and educational initiatives on the respect of creativity.

AFI Italian Association of Phonographic Producers: partner of the AXMEDIS Consortium. Founded in 1933, A.F.I. is a non-profit association acting as a collecting society on behalf of SME producers of sound and video music media (records, music tapes, compact discs, video clips and any other medium suitable for the recording of sound and/or images). AFI.’s activities aims to the protection of Italian music industry both at regulatory levels, supporting relationship with the political authorities and at economical level negotiating agreements for the rights management of the masters owners . A.F.I. membership grew to more than 150 companies, representing all the branches of the Italian music industry. AFI is member of Confindustria, the Italian Industrial Confederation and has the right to draw up agreements in Italy and abroad for the exploitation of the musical products recorded on audio and/or video devices in connection with the public performances, the TV and radio broadcasting, including the new interactive multimedia channels .A.F.I. collects and distributes to its members the incomes related to the above agreements, including the revenues coming from downloaded music upon commission by its members and collects and distributes incomes ensuing from neighbouring rights and private copying rights

Marc Gauvin SdAE. Marc Gauvin has over fifteen years experience (Project Management and Director of Operations) in international projects involving biotechnology and IT.  He possesses a B.Sc. (Integrated Science Studies) from Carleton University (Ottawa Canada) and four years of advanced guitar studies He has worked in IT in several capacities from LAN Administration, programming analyst and Systems Integration to Sales and Marketing.  Over the last four years, he has represented sDae and SGAE in many technical forums including, MPEG, GESAC technical committee on DRM and FastTrack Executive Committee among others.  He provides strategic business decision support, contributing to and reporting on DRM development and provides crucial input to the development and re-engineering projects within SGAE undertaken by sDae and Microgenesis. Presently, Marc is active in the DMP on behalf of sDae (a founding member) and also in MPEG 21 where he has made contributions related to representing the underlying work of Authors’ as a distinct independent digital asset a necessary step required for dealing with the prolific decentralized creation and distribution of digital content.

SDAE Sociedad Digital de Autores y Editores, S.L. (sDae), Spain
Sociedad Digital de Autores y Editores (Spain) sDae is the Digital branch of Spanish General Authors and Publishers Society (SGAE), one of the largest authors and publishers collecting societies in the world with a catalogue administering about 2 million musical works, theatre, dance, movies -mostly of Latin repertoire and an annual income of over 265 million Euros. SdAE was created at the beginning of 2000 to centralise and optimise all the R&D work that SGAE needs to carry out in the coming years. Expert in digital rights management of works, sDae is in charge of designing and directing SGAE's strategy in the digital world and has represented the interests of its parent organization (SGAE) in digital standards fora such as MPEG 21, MI3P and DMP  as well as other DRM related events such as GESAC technical committee on DRM and FastTrack. Since its inception,  sDae has spearheaded the constitution of Argos International Organisation (AIO) an entity charged with the exploitation and marketing of an innovative technology based results from the European ESPRIT Project named “ARGOS Centre Project for IPR Data Collection and Management”. Similarly, sDae is involved in many other European Projects such as “EMUCAST Project” (IST – e-Content) with the objective to develop an infra structure for searching and accessing content from many disparate public and private sources belonging to artists organizations, producers, broadcast stations, news media companies and collecting societies and disseminate that content through internet webcasts to the European and Global information society.

Maila Sansaini IMAIE. General Manager of I.M.A.I.E. (Italian Performers and Artists Rights Organization), from 1994 to 2001 she was responsible of the Data Processing Department and the collection and distribution of performing artists’ rights for the music and audiovisual sectors of IMAIE . Member of the IPDA (International Performers Database Assembly) Technical Committee; member of SCAPR (Societies Collecting Assembly Performers Rights) the international organization of cooperation among collecting societies; member of the International Technical Committee of ARTIS GEIE (International Group of Performers Rights Organizations) and Technical Director of the SIREX international project aiming at creating and developing a database and software for the application of bilateral agreements between countries adhering to the Rome Convention.

IMAIE Italian Performing Artists’ Rights Organization.
IMAIE is a non-profit body,  intends to protect, administer, and manage performing artists’ rights,  deriving from the recording,  duplication, circulation, and in any case, from the utilization of recordings, tapes, wires, sound tracks, and any other support utilized for the  reproduction (including advertising) of sounds, voices, and images, or the exploitation through television and any other system utilized for the circulation, reproduction, or casting of sounds and images of their artistic performances. Within the above scope, IMAIE protects and promotes collective interests of performing artists as provided for by Italian law and exercises as well a permanent protection activity of their rights deriving from the application of national laws promoted by the international Rome Convention of 1961, ratified in Italy, and by the consequent  negotiations,  signed or to be signed. IMAIE has the task to distribute, among right holders, the due compensations defined on the basis of criteria deriving from agreements made between the Trade Union Organizations, the Associations of the Italian Phonographic and Videographic Industry and other opposing parties recognized by the negotiation, by the Italian laws and by international conventions.

Dominic McGonigal, PPL
Dominic McGonigal is Director of Government Relations at PPL representing the interests of record company members and performers to governments here and abroad. Before joining PPL, he was Membership & Media Director at the MCPS-PRS Alliance and while there, he was seconded on behalf of the music industry to the Department of Culture, Media & Sport as Music Industry Adviser.

PPL & VPL
PPL and VPL are embracing the digital age. Bringing together over 800 video producers, 3,000 record companies and 30,000 performers with bilateral agreements across the world, PPL and VPL offer easy licensing solutions both in the UK and across borders. At the heart of the operation is the CatCo database with information on the 7.5m sound recordings PPL licenses, effectively the record industry’s catalogue. Taking a converged approach, PPL and VPL have modernized their business practices delivering efficiencies to rightholders and users. Music and creative content are essential in the knowledge economy and the aim of PPL and VPL is to ensure that they are properly licensed and valued.

Antonio Brunetti SIAE
Graduate in Mathematics from Rome University “La Sapienza”, with specialization in the economic and information technology field, has been working in SIAE since 1975. At the moment is: SIAE’s Director of Information System Department (CIO). SIAE’s Member of the Fasttrack’s Executive Committee and of the CISAC’s CIS Supervisory Board. SIAE’s Manager in charge of the application of the Italian law 196/2003 (Privacy law) concerning the treatment of personal data on IT systems. Project Leader of the Italian Ministry of Finance concerning the establishing of the fiscal and technical rules on electronic ticketing systems for cinema, theatre, sport, concert Member of the Ministry of Finance Commission for the certification of electronic ticketing system

SIAE (Società Italiana Autori ed Editori) is the Italian Authors and Publishers collecting society representing composers, authors, publishers and others owners of any kind of copyright (music, theatre, movie, book, figurative art …) for the purpose of the protection of their works. SIAE mission consists in the management of its members’ copyrights and, accordingly, SIAE issues licenses and authorizations to use copyrighted works, receives the related payments and distributes the income to the right owners. SIAE was created in 1882. Giuseppe Verdi was one of its founders. Currently more than 60.000 authors and composers are registered and more than 5.000.000 of music works are protected. It’s one of the FastTrack founding Members.