Extended copyright licensing: the MOCA survey

Coffee and Copyright: both
start with "C" and both can
be pretty good stimulants ...

The MOCA, which is a short-hand way of saying "The Ministry of Copyright, Cultural, Creators' Assets", is not actually a government department -- though this blogger would be happy to know that an official agency of that name existed if it could be guaranteed to look after the interests of creators.  Nor is it a mis-spelled Arabian coffee bean or the homophone of a popular chocolate-flavoured coffee drink.  Rather, it is a highly specialised consultancy agency that offers over quarter of a century's expertise and media industry advice on copyright policy and legislation, rights management and business development.  Be that as it may, MOCA has taken to heart the need to enlighten the creative community as to the consequences of some significant legislative changes in the United Kingdom.  As the organisation explains:

"By October this year copyright legislation [in the United Kingdom] will change so that authorised legal entities will be able to reuse and collect payments for re-use of creators' works even if they are not members of a collecting society. This change in legislation (ECL [= Extended Copyright Licensing, explained by the UK government here]) will affect all creators in the UK whether they have published their works or made these available via social media sites. Creators who are not happy with this arrangement will have the opportunity to opt out (a) all schemes prior to an ECL commencement or (b) specific licences which may or may not contain your work within 21 days from the published notice".

With this in view, MOCA is running a voluntary independent survey to give everyone an opportunity to have their say about ECL, what they would expect of an Opt-Out procedure and how they think it may affect their business. All information gathered from this survey will be reported back to relevant parties such as rights holders, collecting societies and to the UK Intellectual Property Office. This questionnaire should take less than five minutes to complete.

The closing date for submitting surveys is 25 October 2014. If you are affected by ECL, if you think that you might be, or if you have any friends, family, acquaintances or household pets who might be, do please let them know about it.