The first international workshop of VOIS & SCAPR was held in Moscow

SACPR & VOIS regional workshop on collective management of performers’ rights in the post-Soviet countries and international practice was held in Russia, Moscow, on October 16-17, 2014. It was initiated by VOIS under the aegis of SCAPR.

The event gathered together leading experts from Europe and CIS countries. SCAPR was represented by the Working group on cooperation and development which aims to cooperate with developing regions in order to create an efficient collective management system of performers’ rights.

CEO of VOIS Andrey Krichevsky and Deputy General Director Erik Valdes-Martines welcomed the participants.

Andrey Krichevsky marked in his presentation: «Nowadays a balanced system of intellectual property protection has been created and a system of collective management of rights in Russia is functioning robustly and consistently: more and more users realize the necessity of paying out the remuneration to right-holders, and performers, in their turn, start getting fair reward for creative work. It is the result of great work carried out in different areas, including international cooperation».

Dr. Tomori Pal (EJI, Hungary), Xavier Blanc (Spedidam, France), Andy Prodger (BECS, United Kingdom), Gregor Stibernik (AIPA & IPF, Slovenia), Benoit Machuel (FIM, France), Aleksandar Cvetkovic (PI, Serbia) – the heads of societies – SCAPR members told their colleagues from post-Soviet countries about European directives and international documents, regulating neighboring rights, about the principles of collective management societies’ work and about the main terms of bilateral agreements between such societies.

Experts from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan made presentations, marking particularities of developing the collective management system of neighboring rights in their countries.

The participants of the workshop discussed perspectives of bilateral, regional and international cooperation.

International workshop of VOIS & SCAPR became a high-profile event for the sphere of collective management of performers’ rights. Experts from different countries and regions shared experience and achieved a sophisticated progress in cooperation.

No doubt that international cooperation will contribute to the establishing of an effective system or performers’ rights protection within the territory of post-Soviet countries.

SCAPR, the Societies’ Council for the Collective Management of Performers’ Rights, was founded in 1986. Operating as an international platform for the development of the practical cooperation between performers’ collective management organizations (CMOs), SCAPR strives to improve the exchange of data and performers’ rights payments across borders and represents 52 CMO’s from 38 countries.