Chris Johnstone is head of legal at Music Choice. Along with broadcaster RTL, Music Choice complained to the European Commission in 2000 about collecting society practices, putting music licensing under a legal spotlight.
Eight years and a formal investigation later, the Commission published an antirust decision. Over the next two months, the EU's General Court will hear from 22 collecting societies and CISAC, the organisation which brings together all of the groups, as they try to persuade the judges to overturn the Commission's ruling.
Here, Johnstone tells Managing IP why his company lodged the complaint and what he hopes the Commission will do to reform the collective management of copyright.
Why did you make the initial complaint against the way that collecting societies operate back in 2000?
In the old days, music rights administration in Europe had always comprised a network of national monopoly collecting societies, each with its own...