On 7-8 July 2016, in Astana, the conference on protection of copyright and related rights in Kazakhstan took place. The Ministry of Justice organized this conference and the representatives of WIPO, CISAC, EEC, Kazakh and foreign judges, representatives of law enforcement and other bodies of the government of Kazakhstan, Kazakh and foreign author societies (copyright and related rights), representatives of TV and radio channels, universities, right-holders and other persons took part in the conference.
The conference was interesting and informative. CISAC General Director Gadi Oron during his speech at the conference and personal meeting with Deputy Justice Minister Azimova E. A. stated that the Government of Kazakhstan should impose the order in the collective management domain and forestall chaos. The system should be adequate and in line with the international standards. Kazakhstan has a number of problems in the collective management area. In general, the whole world applies the system of direct agreements. In Kazakhstan, many CMOs are working on the basis of the extended licensing and without direct agreements with right-holders. This causes problems with collection, distribution and payment of royalties. CMOs competing for users apply dumping royalty rates and this will lead to the failure of the collective management.
The representative of the American BMI CMO – Elena Likova-Brunner supported the speeches of Gadi Oron and Mitko Chatalbashev and stand for the fair remuneration of right-holders. She said that the rates should be equal and competition and lobby for users should be avoided. In Kazakhstan, there are lot of CMOs with limited repertoires and low royalty rates this affects negatively the proprietary copyrights. This is inacceptable and should not be so. In the USA the competition is a different story, they are competing for authors providing high-quality services. Kazakhstan should provide for the framework of direct agreements for CMOs.
The representative of Ministry of Culture of Russia – Miryasova K. V. supported the speech of the American orator and talked about the difference of accreditation between Kazakhstan and Russia. She said that one introduced this tool to forestall the chaos prevailed in the copyright area until 2009, and Kazakhstan by borrowing this tool from the Russian law in contrary created this problem.
The representatives of Kazakh and foreign CMOs also delivered their speeches at the conference. KazAK’s Chairman M. Yskakbai delivered a particularly bright and interesting speech on the state of copyright and its perspectives in Kazakhstan.
