09. 07. 2013

ANEM ON THE PROPOSAL OF A SINGLE TARIFF OF OFPS AND PI

After the entry into force of the Amendments to the Law on Copyright and Related Rights on December 17, 2012, the Commission for Copyright and Related Rights has ceased to exist and its rights, obligations, documents, equipment, tools and archive has been taken over by the Intellectual Property Office. As the Commission has not completed the process of giving an opinion on the Proposal of a single tariff of OFPS and PI from February 8, 2012, the Office has invited these organizations to declare whether they want the Office to proceed with giving the approval in line with that tariff proposal, so that the procedure could be brought to an end. On May 20, 2013, collective organizations - OFPS and PI - submitted to the Intellectual Property Office a new Proposal of a single tariff for commercial broadcasters - for airing of phonograms and interpretations recorded on them, of which ANEM was informed on June 21, 2013 in a letter from the said Office.

Responding to the letter, ANEM submitted, on July 8, 2013, its opinion on the new Proposal of single tariff of OFPS and PI from May 20, 2013, primarily emphasizing its request to continue the negotiations on the tariff, arguing the following:

• that ANEM, on one side, and OFPS and PI, on the other, renewed negotiations on tariff during 2012, on the initiative of these collective organizations;
• that after the meetings held in August 2012, OFPS and PI provided ANEM with the main elements of the current tariff (from 2009) as a starting point for further negotiations, and that ANEM submitted on November 1, 2012, its proposal for amending the current tariff, for which OFPS and PI expressed their readiness to discuss at a meeting; until present, that meeting has not been held;
• that ANEM has not been informed by OFPS and PI that these organizations have submitted a new Proposal of the tariff to the Office, let alone that further negotiations have been discarded;
• that ANEM believes it would be appropriate to continue the negotiations, bearing in mind that the Law stipulates the determining of the amount of the fee in agreement between collective organizations and users, and in particular the fact that the amendments to the Law have favored one group of users (public communication) while putting broadcasters in unfavorable position.

Still, in fulfilling its obligation, ANEM also commented on the submitted Single tariff proposal, citing that:

• the proposed tariff must not in any way be aligned with the Tariff of SOKOJ, which is contentious itself due to unrealistically high fees, especially not in proportion 50%: 50%;
• the base for calculation of the fee percentage may not be the overall revenue earned by the beneficiary, as the Proposal foresees, but only the income earned with the activity of broadcasting; the reduction of the base founded on concluding advertising contracts should be higher - 15%;
• when determining the fees, it is necessary to carry out a market analysis to be able to establish fees that are reasonable in the context of local conditions in the media market; ANEM is particularly against almost doubling the amount of fees than it was before and believes that they should be set at the lower amount, taking into account the representation of musical repertoire in programs, in the following manner: radio - in the percentage of 0.3 to 2.7, TV - from 0.36% to 2%;
• the provisions of Article 8 of the Proposed tariff pertinent to granting of discounts are acceptable, but provisions of the same article, with no additional guarantees for users, which provide that the fee shall be increased by 50% if the user has not signed a contract with the collective organization, are utterly unacceptable;
• provisions of the Proposal that stipulate that the authorities in charge of inspection, the RBA, RATEL, etc., will provide assistance, at the request of a collective organization, in the procedure of the control, where no one knows what kind of control it will be performed, are unacceptable;
• ANEM is absolutely against increasing the value of one point from 9 to 11 dinars, especially because there is no explanation for this increase;
• ANEM suggests that the minimum fee remains unchanged, because there is no sufficiently good reason to increase the amount. ANEM is particularly against using the population in the coverage area as a criterion to determine the minimum fee, as utterly unreliable.

ANEM has provided a detailed explanation of the above arguments in its letter and expects that they will be carefully considered. ANEM also expects that the negotiations on the tariff will continue with the collective organizations, given that they have not been formally concluded. 

Read ANEM official comments on the Proposal of a single tariff of OFPS and PI (available only in Serbian)