The quest for pan-European copyright licensing solutions: A series of unfortunate events

Since its 1995 Green Paper, the European Commission has been anxious to foster Europe-wide on-line licensing systems for the trans-border management of copyright and related rights. This process, however, was by no means uneventful. Indeed, through the monitoring of various undertakings falling under the scope of art. 81 TCE, tumultuous relationships with the European Parliament leading to the publication of a Sibylline 2005 recommendation for on-line licensing, and the recent condemnation of the CISAC agreements for the management of on-line music rights, the European Commission, using competition law, dramatically changed the panorama of on-line – and potentially off-line – music licensing.

This content has been updated on February 8, 2016 at 12 h 21 min.