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Copyright: APRA: Retailers Face the Music
Brendan Bailey
Law and Public Administration Group
Copyright: Basic Principles
Copyright is not confined to a single right in a work created by an
author, artist or musician. Copyright comprises multiple rights. Under
the Commonwealth's Copyright Act 1968 these rights include the legal and
exclusive right:
- to reproduce the work in a material form
- to publish the work
- to perform the work in public
- to broadcast the work
- to cause the work to be transmitted to a diffusion service
- to make an adaptation of the work (1).
These rights are protected for individual copyright owners by various
copyright collection agencies, such as the Australasian Performing Right
Association (APRA), which, recently, appears to have intensified its program
of monitoring copyright use by small businesses.
Copyright can be assigned. This means that an author or musician may
sell his or her copyright to a publisher or record producer. Copyright
in a printed work runs for 50 years from the death of the author. Copyright
in sound recordings runs for 50 years.
Economic or material rights are only one dimension of copyright. In
the United Kingdom and Europe, copyright has another dimension and that
is the recognition of moral rights. These rights include the right of
the author or artist to prevent any distortion that affects the integrity
of the work. Australian law does not adequately deal with moral rights.
So important is copyright that it is recognised, along with other forms
of intellectual property, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which states:
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material
interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production
of which he is the author (Article 27, paragraph 2).
Australia is a signatory to a number of international conventions on
copyright and the other forms of intellectual property (eg. patents, trade
marks, designs, plant breeder's rights and circuit layout rights). Australia
is obligated to protect copyright and to treat the copyright owners of
other nations no less favourably than it treats its own copyright owners.
Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA): Other Copyright Collection
Agencies
It is obviously impractical for any single musical composer to travel
the length and breadth of Australia checking on the protection of their
copyright. The same applies to authors and visual artists. Copyright owners
band together to form societies or associations which are authorised to
act on their behalf. In other words, organisations like APRA stand in
the shoes of the author or composer and represent their interests.
APRA was established in Australia in 1926. APRA is authorised to licence
the use of musical material, to collect fees and to distribute those fees
back to the copyright owner. APRA covers Australian and New Zealand composers,
song lyricists and musical publishers. APRA's coverage extends beyond
Australia and New Zealand to the South Pacific. APRA also has reciprocal
agreements with collecting agencies in other countries. APRA is based
on the UK Performing Right Society.
A Royal Commission in 1932 noted the potential for virtual monopoly
by APRA and recommended the establishment of the Copyright Tribunal to
arbitrate in disputes over copyright. The Royal Commission recognised
that much of the concern then directed at APRA was due to a misunderstanding
as to its role and its legal rights (2).
There are other copyright collection agencies and the main ones are:
Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA);
Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS);
Copyright Agency Limited (CAL);
Audio-Visual Copyright Society Limited (AVCS); and
VI$COPY.
Broadly speaking, PPCA has a more limited membership compared with APRA.
PPCA represents the record producers and record manufacturers. A small
business may find that it
will have dealings with more than one collection agency.
Public Performance Right: Playing Radios in Retail Stores
Radio stations pay a fee to APRA so that they can broadcast musical
recordings. Radio listeners receive the broadcast free on their own radios.
The listener does not have the right to play that broadcast in public
because the public performance right belongs to the copyright owner. This
means that a retail store, gymnasium, doctor's surgery or service station
which plays the local radio in a way that can be heard by 'the public'
is breaching copyright unless they have a licence with APRA. The breach
occurs even if the store is closed because playing the radio does not
have to be to the public. The breach is regarded as more akin to the action
of to publicise. Playing the radio to staff in a store without the public
present requires a licence (Australasian Performing Right Association
v Commonwealth Bank of Australia (3) ). Playing the local radio over demonstration
units of car radios in a store also requires a licence (Australasian Performing
Right Association Limited v Tolbush Pty Ltd and Ors (4) ).
An indicative list of the current APRA licence fees (published
by APRA on the Internet) is shown in Table 1.
Licensing of Public Performances - Table 1
| Aerobic & Fitness Classes/ Instructors
| 50 cents per aerobic class
25 cents per circuit class
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| Churches
| $49.82 p.a.
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| Cinemas
| 0.55% of box office
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| Community Groups
| $49.82 p.a.
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| Discos
| 1.69% of gross box office
or, 9.27 cents per person
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| Electrical Stores
| $36.20 for radio and TV only p.a.
$90.42 for radio, TV and records p.a.
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| Recorded background music (records/ Cds)
| $54.25 p.a. plus 90 cents per speaker
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| Radio and TV
| $36.20 plus 90 cents per speaker
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| Stamp Duty on each of the above licence agreements
| $2.
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Endnotes
- See section 31 of the Copyright Act 1968.
- The history of the collection agencies is drawn from Ricketson, S.
The Law of Intellectual Property, The Law Book Company, Sydney,
1984.
- (1993) AIPC 90-948
- (1986) AIPC 90-276
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