Victoria Belous, vice chairman of the commission on economy, budget and finance, questioned the effectiveness of the current mechanism, calling it difficult to apply in practice.
“To be honest, I have huge questions about copyright reporting itself. The mechanism that exists today – excuse me, but it cannot be called a mechanism. And to implement it, thinking as if someone really reports who exactly sang at his place, is simply unrealistic. No restaurant, no economic agent can clearly say who sat at their place and what they sang. They can’t say, “Here’s a list, please divide the money according to what each person sang.” Frankly speaking, it’s just an illusion that accountability exists. There are questions about how the money is managed, and there is dissatisfaction that not all funds are reaching the authors in the proper amount. It is clear that there is an administrative factor, because no one works for free, but we need to be sure that the money really reaches the content creators,” Belous said.
Lost millions
Non-transparent distribution of collected funds is the main systemic problem. Huge sums of money have been distributed chaotically for many years, and it is almost impossible to trace their final route according to official reports.
Olga Beley, director of the Copyright Association: “Millions of lei were collected in 2020-2023, the fate of which is unknown. This money remained lost, the right holders never received it, its status is unclear, and no measures were taken. We have repeatedly asked to check why AGEPI did not control the activity of collective management organizations at that time – how the money was collected, distributed and paid out, as we are talking about millions of lei”.
Victoria Bilous promised to re-send the relevant requests to the competent authorities.
At the moment, there are eight collective management organizations, and now the State Agency for Intellectual Property (AGEPI) is in the process of appointing a single body (collector) responsible for the collection of remunerations based on the criteria of transparency and efficiency.
At the same time, the deputy director of the agency, Natalia Mogol, specified that it is premature to talk about “fraudulent management”:
“We have no such information. We want to understand the situation, and the IGP (Inspectorate General of Police –Logos Press note ) should request this data. But if we do not receive this information, we will later take the appropriate measures provided for by law.”
More leverage for AGEPI
Consultation participants called for stronger mechanisms to monitor and verify financial flows, including annual audits of funds raised and tracing their journey to the final beneficiaries.
“AGEPI as a supervisory body should have the mandatory right to annually audit the money received by these organizations, up to the final instance where it went. While analyzing all the procedures, we came across certain things that raise big questions: how the money was transferred from the accounts of these organizations and by which structures these transfers were carried out. There are suspicions that the funds were transferred to the accounts of some organizations, LLCs or other legal entities that do not fall under the control of AGEPI, and there this money got lost somewhere. I propose to give AGEPI real control levers,” said MP Nicolae Margarint.
Legislation will be changed
For all its vulnerability, the current model is similar to the international practice, where private structures are in charge of management. Nevertheless, according to MP Ion Kiku, this does not mean that the state should abandon regulation:
“We decided, following the best practices, to entrust this intermediation between the payer and the recipient to collective management organizations. But this does not mean that the state should not participate more actively, regulating the activities of these intermediaries. We have a complete fog here … And this has been going on for many years”.
AGEPI is currently in the process of revising its copyright and related rights legislation to harmonize it with European Union directives. There is a deadline to rectify the situation: the new law must be adopted by the end of the year.
