Digital music and copyright problems
04:20' 10/04/2008 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge – The Vietnam Centre for Music Copyright Protection and the Recording Industry Association of Vietnam (RIAV) have announced they will demand “respect and equality” for music copyrights from websites, while musical site managers say they are aware of copyrights but don’t know how to pay, who to pay and what royalty rate is reasonable.
Protection of digital music copyrights enforced
Based on Dispatch 22/BQTG of the Copyright Bureau and Dispatch 02/RIAV/08 of the RIAV, the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism asked websites to remove infringing music files and before uploading music files, they must ask the author’s permission.
In March, websites were told they had to pay royalties to related authors or representatives (RIAV). The royalty was set by RIAV at VND1 million/song/year/website.
RIAV recently sent another dispatch to the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism saying that three websites, timnhanh/com, caigi.com and sonic.vn, didn’t obey the Inspectorate’s request and ignored RIAV’s efforts to contact them.
However, Phan Dang Dung, Marketing Manager of Vietnam Von, the owner of timnhanh.com website, said his company hasn’t done anything wrong. “We have signed many contracts with recording firms and music authors worth hundreds of million VND. Now one more agency comes to ask for royalties. It cannot be said that we are violating the Intellectual Property Law or do not respect music copyrights,” Dung said.
VON has hired a lawyer to check whether it is violating the Intellectual Property Law. “If there is anything which is not correct, we will change to comply with the law,” said VON’s representative.
Not only VON but some big musical sites like nhacso.net have retained intellectual property lawyers because most owners of musical sites are young and online music is a new thing in Vietnam.
nhacso.net, which is considered the first online music project in Vietnam, can’t do business in music through collecting fees from music download and sharing. One of the reasons, according to Nguyen Ngoc Long, chief editor of nhacso.net, is they have to negotiate copyrights with many partners, including authors, recording firms and copyright protection associations.
“Most of them (musical site owners) have goodwill for copyrights but they are facing problems associated with royalty rates and they have to negotiate with so many agencies. I think we need more specific regulations on this area,” said Ngo Thi Sy, chief inspector of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
According to Nguyen Ha Long, an official of the Vietnam Centre for Protection of Music Copyrights, to have full copyright for each music product, musical websites must have copyright certificates of the centre and the Recording Industry Association of Vietnam.
But that’s in the case that authors and producers authorise the Vietnam Centre for Protection of Music Copyright and the Recording Industry Association of Vietnam to collect royalties. In other cases, musical websites have to negotiate with various authors and organisations to buy music.