ZAGREB, 3 March 2022 - The Croatian Association for the Protection of Journalists' Copyright (DZNAP) has been admitted as a member of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), an umbrella organization for the collective protection of the copyrights of authors and publishers across the world. 

With the admission of DZNAP, IFFRO now has 159 members from 85 countries, bringing together millions of authors, visual artists, musicians, and publishers.

"After writers and book publishers, we are the third association from Croatia to join IFRRO. We will not just use the benefits of membership but will also make our contribution by sharing the know-how with those less experienced than us in the collective protection of authors' copyrights and their monetization," DZNAP president Valentina Wiesner said.

IFRRO is an independent non-profit membership association facilitating the collective management of reproduction and other rights in text and image works through the cooperation of its member reproduction rights organizations. Its members collect about a billion euros from copyright fees annually.

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ZAGREB, 3 Aug, 2021 - AEPO-ARTIS, a non-profit organisation that represents over 650 performing artists, has sent a letter to the Croatian culture minister criticising Croatia for being late with the adoption of new copyright legislation and missing a deadline for the implementation of two EU directives, the Croatian Musicians Union said on Tuesday.

The organisation said that the implementation of the Copyright Directive and the Directive on online transmissions and retransmissions was being delayed because Croatia was late with the adoption of the new Copyright and Related Rights Act.

The letter, signed by AEPO-ARTIS secretary general Ioan Kaes, says that the COVID-19 pandemic has widened the gap between the growth of profit by online giants and individual artists because the latter do not participate in the fair distribution of this turnover.

The situation is particularly dramatic because in the new business circumstances the turnover of online platforms has become a dominant source of income for the music industry. For over a year and a half, performing artists have been denied their basic source of income - live performances, while at the same time the use and turnover of their recordings increased and performers could not enjoy their rights equally with others. Although their works still reach wide online audiences, artists receive small or no remuneration for them, according to the letter.

The institute of performers' inalienable right to remuneration is not incorporated into the proposal for the new Copyright and Related Rights Act, and under the proposal, record companies would be given an additional three years to adjust their business. This would allow Croatian record companies to continue their unfair and unethical practice of blackmailing performing artists and not paying them for the performances that have been used by online services for years, the letter said.

AEPO-ARTIS concluded by saying that introducing the inalienable right to remuneration, which artists would be able to exercise through their collective management organisations, is the best, if not the only, solution that guarantees that artists receive appropriate and proportionate remuneration for their work.

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