Macedonia gets tough with infringers, collecting societies -- and theatrical producers

Levies are to be paid to artists
for use of their copyright works

The new Law on Copyright and Related Rights for Macedonia -- the former Yugoslavian bit rather than the current Greek bit, that is -- came into force on 8 September, as part of that country's efforts to bring its IP laws in line with the rest of the European Union, which it aspires to join (Macedonia applied in 2004 and became an official candidate in 2005).

The new law, in accordance with the EU IP Enforcement Directive 2004/48, treats copyright infringement as a criminal offence [this might surprise some readers, who only view the Directive as having civil application, but recital 28 of the Preamble states "In addition to the civil and administrative measures, procedures and remedies provided for under this Directive, criminal sanctions also constitute, in appropriate cases, a means of ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights"]. For this crime, the law provides a prison sentence of six months to five years for natural persons, and a fine for legal entities. The court is also given the power to order copyright infringers not to continue their business activities.  According to the 1709 Blog's sources,

"The new law is more precise and more structured than the previous one. The new regulations are meant to de-monopolize copyright collectives, which guarantee more effective protection and enforcement of copyrights. So far, in practice, a single copyright collective for authors and composers of musical works had a monopoly in copyright protection [It would be good to know more about this move and to place it in the context of the European Commission's current review of collecting society practices].

The law also abolishes copyright protection for theatrical producers. This change was made in accordance with comparative practices, which showed that these copyrights are considered most abstract and are not recognized in most legal systems [We'd love to know more about this.  Can anyone enlighten us?].

The new copyright law also sets more realistic copyright levies that should be paid to artists for use of their copyright works by third parties, and it clearly lists all possible cases of free use of copyright works".

Source: "New Macedonian Copyright Law Treats Copyright Infringement as Criminal Offense", PETOŠEVIĆ, 29 November 2010