A new association founded by 17 Czech media companies today under the name Czech Publishers' Licensing Association (Správce licenčních práv vydavatelů, z.s. - SLPV) aims to represent Czech publishers vis-à-vis large online platforms. The goal of the collective administrator is to defend the rights of publishers towards users of their content, which include large technological platforms, search engines, social networks and press monitoring services, among others.
The establishment of a collective administrator is the culmination of the work of Czech publishers, who negotiated about a collective administrator in the past year. According to official measurements, founding companies represent the absolute majority of the market of print publications in the Czech Republic.
The founding members of SLPV are (in alphabetical order) BurdaMedia Extra s.r.o., Business Media CZ s.r.o., Czech News Center, a.s., Czech Radio, Czech Television, ČTK (Czech News Agency), Echo Media, a.s., Economia, a.s., FTV Prima, spol. s.r.o., Internet Info, s.r.o., MAFRA, a.s., N Media, a.s., Seznam.cz, a.s., Reportér magazín, s.r.o., RF Hobby, s.r.o., Trima News, s.r.o. and Vltava Labe Media, a.s.
In accordance with the statutes of the association, the first Board of SLPV was elected by its founders today, with the following members:
Mr. Jiří Majstr - chairman
Mr. Michal Feix - vice-chairman
Mr. Marek Antoš
Mr. Michal Hanák
Mr. Petr Marek
Mr. Libor Matoušek
Ms. Libuše Šmuclerová
The members of the Supervisory Board are:
Ms. Lenka Černá - chairwoman
Mr. Jan Dosoudil
Mr. Tomáš Tkačík
"We will strive to ensure that as many media as possible can and want to use our services to their advantage. We all believe that the time has long come for not only the platforms to clearly show that the content we create has value for them, and that it is right for them to pay for its use in the same way as other users - from regular subscribers to monitoring agencies or companies and the state sector," the chairman of the Board of SLPV Mr. Jiří Majstr said today.
"The association founded today, thanks to its plurality of members, represents the Czech market of publishers of print publications more than sufficiently and therefore will be able to successfully apply for authorization for the collective management of publishers' rights at the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic in the coming weeks," the vice-chairman Mr. Michal Feix said today.
Thanks to a wide range of founding members, the new association and future collective administrator has the support of a number of professional associations, uniting domestic online content creators.
"The collective administrator has a chance to straighten out the unequal situation on the market, when the content of publishers is used by online platforms without a license, thus without payment. It is an important step towards solving the situation, which in fact publishers all over the world are trying to deal with," Ms. Libuše Šmuclerová, chairwoman of the board of directors of the ČUV (Czech Publishers' Union) said today.
"We expect that our new association will vigorously promote the legitimate interests of all represented media," added Mr. Libor Matoušek, chairman of the AOV (Association of Online Publishers).
"The Association for Internet Development (SPIR) has been representing the most important players in the Czech Internet economy for 20 years and, like many others, has long held the opinion that the current relationship between large platforms and online publishers should have been resolved a long time ago," SPIR Executive Board Chairman Mr. Michal Hanák stated.
The collective management of publishers' rights was introduced to the Czech Republic in December 2022 by the amendment to the Copyright Act No. 121/2000 Coll., which transposed the European Directive (EU) 2019/790 of April 17, 2019 on copyright and related rights in the single digital market (Directive on APnJDT). Publishers may entrust the exercise of some of their license rights to a collective administrator. The collected license fees from the rights users are then fairly distributed by the collective administrator according to the accounting rules among all represented publishers.
Article 15 of the Directive on APnJDT grants publishers of print publications the right to remuneration for the use of their print publications by online service providers of the information society. Act No. 429/2022 Coll., which transposed the directive into the Czech legal system, entered into force on January 5, 2023. Czech publishers thereby finally gained the possibility of collective representation vis-à-vis users of their content, especially from online platforms, search engines, social networks and press monitoring services.
In the coming weeks, the SLPV will decide on the managing director and will start preparing the documents in order to obtain authorization to become collective administrator of rights for the media represented by it from the Ministry of Culture.
Further information about SLPV will later be available on the website www.slpv.cz.