Collecting Society Projects/Netherlands

Parties Involved

Creative Commons Netherlands is a joint venture between Kennisland, Waag Society and the Institute for Information Law (IViR) in cooperation with Creative Commons International, a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works.

Buma/Stemra represents the interests of domestic and foreign music authors and publishers in the Netherlands. Buma/Stemra’s core task is to exploit music copyrights (i.e. collect and distribute royalties) and manage them for its affiliated composers, lyricists and music publishers.

Objectives

The principal reason for this pilot is to offer musicians more flexibility in distributing their works. The pilot is meant as a test to see whether it is useful in practice to combine the systems of Buma/Stemra and Creative Commons.

How does it work

In order to publish works under a creative commons license Buma/Stemra members participating in the pilot need to undertake 5 steps:

1. First of all, it is important to ensure that the permission of all rights holders has been obtained. The fact is that, aside from the composer and/or the lyricist, there may be all kinds of rights holders, such as co-authors, an arranger or publishers. A work may only be distributed under a CC license subject to the permission of all rights holders.

2. In order to take part in the pilot, the musician has to be a member of Buma/Stemra. As a member you transfer the exploitation of your copyrights on your works to Buma/ Stemra, thereby enabling Buma/Stemra to collect the copyright royalties whenever third parties record or use your works. Musicians who are not yet a member of Buma/ Stemra may take out a membership and then proceed to follow the same procedure in order to release parts of their repertoire under a Creative Commons License.

3. The musician in question then indicates to Buma/Stemra which works he/she would like to distribute under a Creative Commons License. You do so (per work) through the Buma/Stemra website on which detailed instructions and special conditions can be found. Buma/Stemra then knows for which works they need not send an invoice within the scope of the pilot.

4. Next, the musician selects one of the three available licenses for non-commercial use on the Creative Commons website:

• use of the works while attributing the work to you;
• use of the works while attributing the work to you, but without any adaptations, such as remixes, being allowed;
• use of the work while attributing the work to you, whereby the work may be adapted by third parties, subject to the condition that the remix is also made available under the same condition.

5. Finally, the work may be published online (or offline) for distribution and reproduction.

Definition (Non)Commercial

Within the scope of the pilot between Creative Commons Netherlands and Buma/Stemra, ‘commercial use’ should be taken to mean the following:

Every use of the Work by for-profit institutions is qualified as ‘commercial use’.

In addition, within the scope of the pilot, distributing or publicly performing or making available online the Work against payment or other financial compensation (including the use of the work in combination with ads, publicity actions or other similar activities intended to generate income for the user or a third party) is qualified as ‘commercial use’.

Within the scope of the pilot, ‘commercial use’ also includes the distribution or public performance or having broadcasting organisations make the Work available online, as well as using the Work in hotel and catering establishments, work, sales and retail spaces. This also applies to organisations that use music in or in addition to the performance of their duties, such as, for example, churches, schools (including dancing schools), institutions for welfare work, etc. Separate licenses are available from Buma/Stemra for such kinds of use.

source: Fact Sheet Pilot Creative Commons Netherlands and Buma/Stemra

Experiences (so far)

Additional Information

• Announcement on the cc-blog: Dutch Collecting Societies Welcome CC
• Fact Sheet Pilot Creative Commons Netherlands and Buma/Stemra
• Press Release: More opportunities for music authors to promote their own music
• Evaluation Report: August 2010 Evaluation of the Creative Commons Buma/Stemra pilot by Paul Keller (Creative Commons Nederland) & Andy Zondervan (Buma/Stemra)

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