Prior to the coming into force of the Copyright (Amendment) Act 1994, s. 33 to 36 dealt with Performing Right Societies which carried on the business of issuing or granting licenses for the performance in India of any work in which copyright subsisted. The activities of such societies were limited to copyright subsisting in literary, dramatic and musical work which can be performed in public.
The Copyright (Amendment) Act, 1994, has extended the operation of the legal provisions to the business of issuing or granting licenses in respect of all rights relating to any class of work which copyright subsisted under the Act. Organisations which were authorised to carry on such business are called Copyright Societies. The provisions relating to such copyright societies are contained in s. 33 to 36A.
The owner of a copyright in any work can derive monetary benefit from his work only by exercising some or all of the rights conferred under s.14 either by himself or by authorising others to do so for a consideration. In the alternative he may assign some or all of the rights to others for a consideration.
The business of issuing or granting license in respect of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works incorporated in a cinematograph film or sound recording shall be carried out only through a copyright society duly registered under this Act.
Ordinarily the authors of creative work are not business minded and they have seldom the financial resources or the business skill to exploit their work by themselves. For example, in the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work one of the ways in which the owner of the right can get monetary benefit is by issuing copies of the work to the public on a sufficiently large scale. The best way to do this is to license a publisher to publish the work on a royalty basis. In the case of dramatic and musical works the owner can derive monetary benefit by licensing its performance in public or communicating the work to the public for a fee. Further, it is extremely difficult for the owner of the work to prevent infringement of the work anywhere in India or abroad. To overcome this difficulty owners of copyright works have formed societies to license their works for performance or communication to the public or issue copies of the work to the public. Thus copyright societies are formed to license the works.
