Frequently asked questions about copyright

Unlike trademarks or patents, you do not have to take any steps or complete any formalities to protect a work. Copyright protection applies automatically as soon as there is an original work and it is incorporated in a concrete form (a mere idea is not protected). Originality arises from the free creative choices that the author has made, which put the author's personal stamp onto the work. Any creation of the human mind may be protected as it is. Works that are not created by a natural person (an animal, a machine) are not subject to copyright.

However, despite the automatic protection, it may be useful to keep proof of the date of creation of the work and the fact that you are its author or co-author. You should also be aware that you are free to provide that proof. In fact, you can perfectly demonstrate that you are the creator of the work through various means of proof, in particular any document, recording or publication that would be useful, without them being endorsed or certified beforehand by any organisation.

Collective societies are private companies responsible for the collection and distribution of copyright and related rights from the use of works and services. They have ministerial authorisation to carry out their activities within Belgium. You can find an overview of the recognised collecting societies in Belgium on presentation of collecting societies (PDF, 640.91 KB).

Collecting societies are supervised by the FPS Economy's Service for the Supervision of Collecting Societies for Copyright and Related Rights.

When you join a collecting society, rights are transferred, so that the collecting society acts on behalf of the beneficiary. For more information, you can read the articles of association, general regulations and conditions of membership of the collecting society to get an overview of the services it offers.

A collecting society may also use auditors (authorised agents), employed by the society, to carry out on-site audits (at the event or operation) of the use of the directory represented by the collecting society.

The Reprobel collecting society has been appointed by Royal Decree to collect and distribute the remuneration for reprography and the legal remuneration for publishers.

It has also developed a tariff for printing copyrighted works and reusing digital works on the basis of mandates that it has obtained from the Reprobel collecting society members.

If you (company, liberal profession, etc.) photocopy and/or print protected works, you must pay the corresponding remuneration to Reprobel. This collecting society allows users to choose:

1. Either a combined licence covering digital uses, printing, the reprography remuneration and the publishers' statutory remuneration (called bizili);
2. Or to simply make a ”reprography declaration“ and only pay for the ”paper“ uses. In this case, you will then have to make a choice between:

1. A more tailored standardised declaration, which depends on the category of the company.
2. A volume declaration (based on the number of copies of protected works), in which you indicate how many photocopies and prints of protected works you have made. You then pay a specific fee per page.

You should make your choice by going to the Reprobel portal and entering the username and password assigned to you. Certain elements of your declaration will be pre-filled on the basis of the information that Reprobel has through the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises and the NSSO. It is possible that this data does not fully correspond to your actual situation. You can therefore correct it in the ”Mon profil“ (My profile) section of the portal. You should also enter or confirm other information such as the number of FTEs, or the volume of photocopies or prints.

You may notify Reprobel if you have not copied any copyrighted work by choosing to make a reprography declaration based on volume and stating, both for photocopies and prints, that your gross volume is 0 and/or that there is 0 % protected source. The simple fact of having a device (photocopier, fax, scanner, etc.) does not authorise Reprobel to send you an invoice.

You may make the declaration on the Reprobel portal, entering the username and password assigned to you in the letter.

Contact

Reprobel is a legitimate company that is responsible for the collection of the remuneration for reprography and the legal remuneration for publishers. Furthermore, it is also responsible for collecting the amounts due for the printing of copyrighted works and the reuse of digital works. It is therefore entirely legitimate for the company to contact you.

Using the portal does not pose any danger and its use is necessary to regularise the use or reproduction of certain works. It may seem surprising that Reprobel automatically provides a login and password, but that facilitates access to the portal. The pre-filled information has been obtained through the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises and the NSSO. However, do not forget to check this as it does not automatically correspond to your current situation.

Reprobel's tariffs are fixed according to the sector (public or private), the category of the company, or the number of FTEs.

Before disputing the total amount requested, you must determine whether the criteria that have been applied to your declaration are correct and whether the type of declaration chosen corresponds to your company's situation. If this is not the case, you may amend those criteria or the type of declaration via the Reprobel portal, entering the username and password assigned to you in the letter.

If you have any questions about the declaration or the portal, you can contact Reprobel using the contact form.

Contact

Fair remuneration is remuneration owed by the user to the collecting societies that represent the performers (singer, guitarist, etc.) and the producers (music producers).

You must pay this remuneration in the event of the public broadcasting of recorded music (through a digital recording, CD, MP3, radio, etc.).

You must submit declarations of music use for an operation or an event via a single platform for music use: Unisono. This platform allows the payment of all remunerations related to the use of music with the collecting societies SABAM (remuneration for copyrights), SIMIM and PlayRight (fair remuneration for performers and producers) in one go.

Unisono may charge you additional amounts.

You must declare the temporary activity to the relevant collecting societies at least five calendar days before the activity begins. The collecting society may demand a flat-rate surcharge if you do not meet this deadline. In the event of a late declaration, this surcharge increases to 15 % of the licence, with a minimum of 45 euro. If no declaration has been made, the increase is also 15 % but with a minimum of 100 euro. If the declaration is made before the deadline, but the details are clearly incomplete or incorrect, the increase is 15 %, with a minimum of 100 euro. Those amounts are indexed.

If no declaration has been made and an inspector from the competent collecting societies has to go in person to make findings, a fee of 125 euro may be charged, provided that this is a sworn official, i.e. a person designated by ministerial order.

If you are a consumer, no additional expenses may be charged for the first reminder sent. A maximum of 20 euro may be charged for any subsequent reminders prior to the judicial phase for a debt of less than 150 euro. Also for consumers, no expenses will be charged by Unisono for the first reminder. In the event of a second reminder, 15 euro will be charged.

Yes, because even if an annual contract has been concluded by the operator for the venue where the event takes place, the annual contract may not necessarily cover all events held in the venue.

For example, fair remuneration for an event is not covered by the annual ”with beverages” contract if you are hosting a ”with dance” event. In that case, you must submit a specific declaration for the event. This also applies to remuneration for copyrights to SABAM: you must specifically check whether the planned activity falls well within the framework of the annual contract, or whether an additional amount must be paid.

It is therefore important to check the category of the event you wish to organise, so you can determine whether it is covered by the annual contract.

You can contact Unisono via the ”Contact” section of their website, or by calling +32 (0)2 286 82 11.

Normally not because, in principle, a collecting society cannot collect rights for the use of a work or service whose management has not been entrusted to it by its owner.

However, there are important exceptions to this principle (legal licences) for the collection of:

• remuneration for private copying;
• remuneration for reprography;
• legal remuneration for publishers;
• remuneration for the reproduction and communication of works in the context of teaching and scientific research;
• remuneration for public lending;
• fair remuneration.

Where there is a legal licence, the rights holder cannot refuse to give consent to the exploitation of their works or services but is entitled to receive remuneration for their use. The amount of this remuneration is set by Royal Decrees.

Similarly, there is mandatory collective management for a certain number of operations, namely

• Cable retransmission,
• communication to the public by direct injection,
• the remuneration of authors of an (online) press publication for which the publishers have concluded agreements with the service providers of the information society and the right to remuneration for authors and performers vis-à-vis certain service providers of the information society whose main objective is to offer a large quantity of sound and/or audiovisual works for profit.

In those cases, as no remuneration is fixed by Royal Decree, the rights holders are obliged to use a collecting society to fix the tariffs for the exploitation of works and performances by cable retransmission and direct injection.

In the cases mentioned above, it does not matter whether or not the work or performance is part of the collecting society's repertoire, as the rights are due as soon as the established criteria for use are met.

If the performers and phonogram producers have definitely waived the fair remuneration due to them, the collecting society cannot collect it.

Yes.

If you want to know whether a particular work belongs to the repertoire of a collecting society, you can send it a reasoned request. The society must provide you with this information without undue delay and by electronic means (Section XI.267 of the Code of Economic Law).

You can receive several invoices for the use of a work.

The reason is as follows: the creation of a work very often involves joint creators. For example, a song is written by a composer and a lyricist, without these two functions necessarily being performed by the same person. Similarly, the performer is not necessarily the composer, and a number of musicians, guitarist, pianist, drummer, etc. are involved in the recording of the music tape. Finally, the financial contribution of the producer is necessary for the work to see the light of day.

These different parties each have an exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the reproduction or communication of the work. If you want to reproduce or distribute a work, you must therefore obtain many different authorisations.

These rights-holders generally come together in collecting societies, to which they entrust the management of the rights attached to their works or services. These societies specialise in specialist sectors and/or in categories of rights. You can find an overview of the collecting societies that are active in Belgium in this presentation document.

It is therefore possible that you will have to pay invoices from either one or more collecting societies or directly from the rights-holders if they have chosen to manage their own rights.

Since the one-stop shop Unisono was established, it has also been possible to manage the use of music in a facility (shop, café, etc.), for your staff, or as part of an event, after which you will receive an invoice.

A collecting society may use auditors working on its behalf to make on-site (during the event or at the facility) observations regarding the use of the repertoire it represents. These inspectors may be approved by a ministerial decree, and in this case, their findings are valid until proven otherwise. The agents are approved on the basis of Article XI.263, § 3 of the Code of Economic Law and sworn in in accordance with Article 572 of the Judicial Code

Any user who disputes the findings of an authorised agent must provide evidence to support these findings. They may provide this evidence by any legal means (writing, testimony, presumption, preliminary written evidence, etc.) but must first present it to the collecting society or societies concerned.

Authorised agents do not have the powers of the criminal police. They therefore simply have the right to seek information within the same limits as an ordinary citizen. They do not have the power to enter private premises or, unless provided by law, obtain copies of certain documents. They may only record facts that may constitute infringements of the rights recognised by Title 5 of Book XI of the Code of Economic Law, provided that these facts occur in a place accessible to the public.

Findings made by a non-approved agent may also be taken into account but will not have any particular force of evidence.

The Control Service of the Copyright Management Companies is competent to verify the legality of the findings of authorised agents. You can contact the Contact Point if you wish to make a complaint.

The collecting societies must take the necessary measures to distribute and pay the royalties they collect within nine months of the end of the financial year in which the royalties were collected (Article XI.252, § 1, paragraph 2 of the Code of Economic Law). If your collecting society collects your dues on the basis of a representation agreement, this period will be six months from the day your collecting society collected the dues (Article XI.260, § 3, paragraph 2 of the Code of Economic Law).

If it cannot meet this deadline, the collecting society must state the objective reasons for this in its management report. If you do not receive your fees within this period, you can ask the collecting society for an explanation.

You can take the matter to court if you do not receive an explanation or are not satisfied with this explanation. In addition, you can also file a complaint with the Contact Point.

To find out how much you are owed by the collecting society, please refer to this society's allocation rules. You can ask your collecting society for these rules if you do not have them. The company is obliged to provide you with the rules within three weeks (Article XI.249, § 3 of the Code of Economic Law).

If you feel that these rules have not been properly applied, you should first contact your collecting society and make a complaint. As a rule, it must respond within one month (Article XI.273/1, § 3 of the Code of Economic Law). If the collecting society refuses to change its position and you maintain your position, then you should either go to court or file a complaint with the Contact Point.

We refer you to the "Copyright Guidelines for website owners (PDF, 228.13 KB)" published by the FPS Economy.

If you want to create a website containing protected works (text, image, photo, music sequence, video or music video), it is important to take the following steps and seek advice from a competent person in the field.

• Make an inventory of the elements that will be reproduced or used on the website and that may be protected by copyright.
• Determine the copyright and related rights-holders from whom you need to obtain permission.
• Define how these protected works will be used.
• Draft a licence agreement and negotiate the rights with the rights-holders concerned (author, publisher, producer, etc.).
• Keep all the agreements and authorisations obtained from the rights-holders, in case you are required to subsequently prove the existence of an agreement with the latter.

You will find useful information for this on the "Copyright" and "Related rights" pages.

Background music on the website of my company, association or public service

You have to distinguish between what is owed to songwriters and what is owed to producers. You can cover the remuneration due to both parties via the Unisono platform. Unisono is a collaboration between SABAM, SIMIM and PlayRight. Go to the Unisono website, then click on "Make a simulation", "Utilisation quotidienne (horeca, magasin, musique sur le lieu de travail)" (Daily use (hotel and catering, shop, music in the workplace, etc.)), choose "Autres" (Other) in the drop-down menu, "Musique de fonds sur un site web" (Background music on a website) and "Sauvegarder et continuer vers le tarif" (Save and continue to the price).

Fill in the requested data and the price will appear.

You can also print and complete a declaration form. There are separate forms for certain sectors.

Please note: you will only be allowed to use music under the following four cumulative conditions:

1. The total duration of use may not exceed 15 minutes;
2. The music must be used in a non-downloadable format;
3. It must not be a webradio;
4. The music must not be used for a commercial, promotion or animation (flash, video, etc.).

If your website does not meet these conditions, you will have to obtain a licence.

Making music or video clips available "on demand" on my website (streaming)

You have to distinguish between what is owed to songwriters and what is owed to producers, singers and performers.

To remunerate songwriters, go to the Unisono website and click on "Music", "Internet" and "Music streaming rate" to find the price.

These rights belong to SABAM, but as Unisono is managed by SABAM, you can submit your request via this platform, by clicking on "Apply for your licence". You must login or register if this is your first visit to the site.

However, this remuneration only covers the rights of songwriters. You must therefore also take additional steps for the rights of producers, performers and musicians. However, it is not necessary to contact the performers' collecting society, "PlayRight", as performers generally assign their dues for this type of use to the producers. As a result, you must obtain the authorisation of the music producers' collecting society. To do this, you will need to do one or more of the following.

Musical works

If you want to make musical works available "on demand", you must contact the producers directly to obtain the required authorisations. If you want to make these musical works available in a linear or semi-linear (webradio) way, you can go through SIMIM, the producers' collecting society. Go to the SIMIM website and click on the "Internet Music" page.

You will find the rates and the declaration form under "Webcasting/Streaming".

Video clips

If you want to make video clips available "on demand", you must contact the video clip producers directly to obtain the required authorisations. If you want to make these video clips available in a linear or semi-linear way, you can go through Imagia, the video clip producers' collecting society. Go to the Imagia page of the SIMIM website, where you will find the applicable rates.

You have to distinguish between what is owed to songwriters and what is owed to producers, singers and performers.

To remunerate songwriters, go to the Unisono website and click on "Music", "Internet" and "Commercial audiovisual production rate" to find the price.

These rights belong to SABAM, but as Unisono is managed by SABAM, you can submit your request via this platform, by clicking on "Apply for your licence". You must login or register if this is your first visit to the site.

However, this remuneration only covers the rights of songwriters. You must therefore also take additional steps for the rights of producers, performers and musicians. However, it is not necessary to contact the performers' collecting society, "PlayRight", as performers generally assign their dues for this type of use to the producers. So you must obtain authorisation from the music producers' collecting society.

To do this, you can visit the SIMIM website. Click on "Audiovisual Productions", and then on "More information about the declaration of audiovisual productions". Then ask for a contract by contacting the address mentioned on the "Audiovisual Productions" page, under "Information": vince.versteynen@simim.be, tel: +32 2 775 82 10.