Music royalties

China's radio and TV stations will be required to pay royalties on music they broadcast, starting next year when a set of fee collection methods and standards will be officially promulgated, according to an official with the National Copyright Administration, who refused to be named.

Regulations are being drawn up by the Office of Legislative Affairs of the State Council.

In 2001, the government amended its copyright law, requiring radio and TV stations to pay fees to copyright holders for playing their recordings unless they had reached other agreements on fees.

Cultural heritage database

China has established an initial database for intangible cultural heritage (ICH) across the country to better protect the heritage from declining due to challenges from urbanization and globalization.

According to UNESCO, "intangible cultural heritage" refers to practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage.

Fourteen provinces and autonomous regions have already established province-level ICH lists, says Zhou Heping, vice-minister of culture, at a training programme on ICH survey and application held in Quanzhou, in East China's Fujian Province.

The province-level ICH listing is under way in 11 other provinces or regions. Another six are also preparing to do so, according to Zhou.

Meanwhile, significant progress has been made on a national survey on the varieties, distribution and condition of ICH, which was launched in June last year, Zhou says.

Online copyrights

China's copyright authorities have agreed with US and British counterparts to strengthen co-operation in online copyright protection.

A Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of a Co-ordination Mechanism for Online Copyright Protection was signed in Beijing by the National Copyright Administration of China (NCA) and the Motion Picture Association, Business Software Alliance, Association of American Publishers and Britain-based The Publishers Association.

According to the memorandum, all sides will strengthen and improve the authentification of copyright authorization, and communicate on cracking down on trans-national online piracy and copyright infringement on a regular basis.

The American and British sides will provide timely lists to the NCA of their member companies which pursue the protection of their movies, software, video and audio products and written works.

They will also provide information on infringement activities which harm the copyrights of their member companies.

The NCA will investigate reported cases and hand over those allegedly involved to judicial departments.

(China Daily 12/25/2006 page9)