Prague, March 23 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman signed an amendment to the copyright law under which copyright fees can be raised by inflation and any higher increase must be approved by the Culture Ministry, Zeman’s spokesman Jiri Ovcacek told CTK on Thursday.
The amendment reacts to the plan to raise copyright fees by up to 50 percent, announced by the Copyright Protection Association (OSA) and Intergram, an association of performers and producers of audio and audiovisual recordings. These bodies engaging in collective rights management justified the planned increase by a strong pressure from foreign copyright collecting agencies.
Critics considered the demands of copyright collective agencies exorbitant since they would extremely burden municipalities as well as restaurant and hotel operators.
According to the amendment, the copyright collective agencies also must ask for an additional consent of the antitrust office UOHS for a steep rise in copyrights fees in the past three years.
The disputes about the level of the fees are to be decided by court.
The OSA increased the fees for music copyright by up to 50 percent and the Dilia association by 25 percent. This concerned television broadcasting in restaurants.
Zeman also signed several other bills into law on Thursday, including amendments setting standards for imported tissues and cells (transplant law) and new rules for the creation and use of public administration IT systems (civil service IT systems law), increasing state subsidies paid to companies employing disabled persons (employment law) and paying schools according to the number of lessons rather than number of students (school law).
