It has recently come to my attention that a certain agency in my country (I'll call it agency X), which deals in copyright and collecting royalties on the authors behalf, has established a monopole.
It claims that it protects the copyright of over 5500 domestic artists and over 2 million international artists.
But, agency X goes about its business in a strange way: it doesn't deal with the artist directly but rather with the venue at which the artist will preform - the person responsible for the organization of the venue fills out a sheet of paper on which he/she must state which songs will be played and who is the author of the songs - based on that, agency X will calculate the amount of money that the person/organization responsible for the venue must pay to _NOT_the_artist_ but to the agency itself. Later on, on a fixed date every month or year, the agency will send to the author his/hers royalties.
But, here's the interesting part: as an artist, you can choose not to be represented by agency X - agency X is a membership-based organization, not an obligatory one. But either way, the agency X will demand of the person/organization responsible for the venue to pay a certain amount of money which will, according to agency X, go to the artist (even though the artist chose not to be represented by agency X).
There have been stranger cases - a certain international band plays a gig at a local club and a representative of agency X shows up and demands from the local club to pay for the royalties (not to the artist but to the agency). So the band says to the representative: it's OK, we don't want any royalties from this gig, your services are not needed. So the representative calls the police and claims that the local club is violating artists copyright even though the artist himself is in agreement with the local club and doesn't want representation from agency X.
And my personal favorite: agency X receives a small percentage of the fee from every blank CD/DVD/(any type of recording media) sold on the basis that the person who buys the media
could use it to copy an original work by some artist. So, basically, everyone who buys a blank CD is presumed guilty for piracy.
I'm interested if such ridiculous scenarios are possible in your countries and if such racketeering agencies exist there, and how your anti-piracy laws function and how do your laws protect and enable the artist to collect his royalties. I'm especially interested in how the laws and artists in EU and USA deal with those situations.
