A Comparative Study On The Systems Of Copyright Collective Administration Organizations: From The Perspective Of Civil Law System

Copyright collective administration is a special system in the intellectual property rights protection. This system originated from France.In western countries, some well-known collective societies have a two-hundred-year history. In China, collective administration organizations are relatively new to most people. The Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC ) ,which was established in 1992,is now the only music society in the Mainland China.Intellectual property rights are private rights. In principle, the rights should be exercised by the authors. In the digital environment, in some circumstances,it is impracticable or impossible for the the rightholders to exercise their copyright and neighboring rights.They can do so through collective administration organizations.Both the rightholders and the users can benefit greatly from collective administration.Now we are making laws about copyright collective administration. It is clear that we will adopt the legislative style of the civil law countries. After a comparison is made in the collective administration systems in Germany, Japan and Taiwan Province, the concluding remarks are as follows: In our country, it is not ripe to introduce the competition mechanism. It is a good choice to establish collective administration organizations according to the classification of works. Copyright collective administration needs the active involvement of the government. Collective administration should be based on voluntary authorising through contract for copyright transfer. The registration and notification systems in Japanese law and the dispute settlement system in German law are of great value to us.