Handling the controls
By : Anna KociNska
Frustrated cable operators hit with multiple artists' royalty fees have agreed to band together to bring more transparency to the process.
To counteract what they call the "insatiable appetites" of copyright agencies representing filmmakers and writers, cable firms will meet by the end of June to form an alliance that will lobby for the creation of a streamlined royalty payment system. Under the current code, cable operators and radio broadcasters may be approached for payment by up to 13 such groups. As a result, broadcasters are having a tough time sorting out what they owe and to whom.
Agencies representing the rights of artists have flourished since 1989, when under communism artists had few claims to their work after it was produced. Nowadays, movie directors, composers or scriptwriters can select from among 13 organizations to represent themselves, such as the Authors Assoctiation (ZAiKS) (http://www.zaiks.org.pl) or the Authors and Audiovisual Workers Union (ZAPA), which represents filmmakers, screenwriters and cinematographers. Most of these groups hold licenses distributed by the Culture and National Heritage Ministry and are free to collect royalty payments for their clients.
But according to Andrzej Ostrowski, chairman of the National Cable Communications Chamber of Commerce (http://www.catv.com.pl), cable operators cannot afford to pay royalty fees to each of the 13 organizations in business, some of whom charge double their counterparts. "We need funds to invest in Internet access and other additional services because it's the only way to survive on the market," he said. Ostrowski added that the decreasing purchasing power of subscribers is another a problem. "But in the end what gave us the impetus to act was the experience of one of the cable operators, who was approached by an organization of movie makers demanding 5% of revenue from subscriber fees as a copyright payment," said Marek Sowa of UPC Telewizja Kablowa, which has more than 1 million subscribers.
Sowa said that such demands were "dangerously extravagant" and if agreed to by cable operators might mean serious financial trouble for many smaller networks in Poland. "We are prepared to pay copyrights but they have to be reasonable," Sowa said. "We need one partner who would represent all those organizations and would negotiate one guaranteed, fixed fee. We can't agree to a situation in which the more assertive an organization is the more it gets and you never know when they will come back and ask for more."
Clashes between copyright organizations and cable operators heated up last year. Under an amendment to the 1994 Copyright Law, cable operators were required to pay royalty fees for retransmitting TV or radio programs.
Marcin Jakubowski, a Warsaw-based lawyer, said last week that broadcasters are partly to blame for the financial demands of copyright holders. "(Cable operators) enriched their offers, sometimes (by as much as) dozens of channels, forgetting that someone will have to pay for copyrights," he said.
At the same time, representatives of copyright organizations said that due to the system's muddy set of rules broadcasters are easily confused about what they owe. "With the licenses granted randomly, there are many organizations whose powers overlap and for instance cable operators don't really know whom they should pay and for what," said Andrzej Kusmierczyk, head of the license and collection division at ZAiKS. "What can you do if two organizations with the same powers demand payment? If we get payments regularly from cable operators it is because we proved we are competent and we do represent authors." While ZAiKS, established in 1918, has a strong position among copyright organizations and has practically no problems collecting payments from cable operators, it seems that it won't be able to avoid quarreling with broadcasters and operators who claim that changes to the current system are a must.
"Cable operators say that they will talk to us (copyright organizations), but only if we are represented by one body and that's something ZAiKS can't agree to," Kusmierczyk said. "We don't want to be treated like other organizations, whose operations are unclear."
But other copyright organizations, most of whom received their licenses in the mid-1990s, are determined to expand their operations by covering more and more cable operators. "You can't compare us with ZAiKS, but we will defend our rights for instance against cable operators," said Agnieszka Kowalik, a legal adviser at the Audiovisual Producers Union (ZPAV). "Before we can do that we need to build the infrastructure to be able to reach the potential payers (those who are to make payments)."
This growing appetite among existing copyright organizations has frightened cable operators. "You don't really know how much they pay copyright holders out of what they get from us," UPC's Sowa said. The rates accepted by the Copyright Commission (KPA), the copyright watchdog established by the Culture Ministry, is the minimum the organizations can demand. But according to most copyright groups, what they really get depends on how well they negotiate. "It's a compromise between the demands of authors and the payers' ability," ZAiKS's Kusmierczyk said. ZAiKS's current rate for a musical performance is 3.5%, he said. "But I know that some organizations, which still have only one desk and a telephone, demand even more than we do."
According to Jakubowski, copyright organizations are also to blame for the conflicts with cable operators. "The problem is that it's not the author but the organization itself that matters to them," he said. Jakubowski added that bringing more transparency to the process is the only solution. "No such organization ever said how much money goes to authors and how much simply stays with the organization. So, instead of changing the current law I would suggest making their finances transparent." Jakubowski said that even artists complain that they get little money and they don't know how much the organizations keep for themselves. But ZAPA's Mazinska countered that the rules are quite clear. Copyright holders receive payments quarterly and ZAPA keeps a certain percentage of them. "It's usually 10-14%," she said. "If artists complain, they say that it's the TV broadcasters that pay too little."
