Letter – Karyawan urges immediate reinstatement of Music Rights Malaysia

THE Malaysian Artistes’ Association Karyawan disagrees vehemently with the decision taken by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs of Malaysia, to allow the dissolution and dismantling of the single collection body system for royalties for public performance of music, namely Music Rights Malaysia Bhd or MRM.
 
The system, in which MRM Bhd represented the 3 different rights in a piece of music (musical works, sound recordings and recording performers) and was the only one collecting the royalties from music users, was working well and there were very few if any complaints from any of the users or even the bodies involved once the system had been implemented in 2016. It is indeed surprising that the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs has taken the decision to allow the abandonment of a system that was working well and had the support of most parties involved in this issue.
 
We are convinced that the reason for the Ministry allowing this to happen is that certain parties felt they would have a better chance of increasing the amount of royalties that they would be able collect if the system was abandoned. This would have to be the expense of consumers and music users, who would end up paying more in order for this to happen. They had convinced the government that the single collecting body was an intrusion into their private right as embodied in the Copyright Act 1987.
 
Most shockingly, they were then subsequently allowed to go back to the original arrangement starting 1st May 2020, with each of the 3 bodies, namely MACP (Music Authors’ Copyright Protection) representing authors and publishers, PPM (Public Performance Malaysia) representing recording companies and RPM (Recording Performers Malaysia)  representing recording performers, collecting on their own.
 
Due to the split of the royalties on a 2:1:1 basis where MACP receives 50% and PPM and RPM 25% it has been speculated  that PPM was the party that is responsible for lobbying the government to shut down the operations of MRM. This would allow them to go back to collecting on their own, whereby they were hopeful of increasing the amount of royalties to be equal or more than that of MACP, whereby their rights under the law fell far short of the rights possessed by MACP under the act.
 
Musical works (owned by MACP) are used in every type of musical performance, whether live or recorded. Conversely, sound recordings are only used in a non-live setting i.e. only where recorded music belonging to members of PPM is used. PPM do not have any rights to collect royalties from live performances and concerts which do not use recordings, which form a huge part of the royalty collection each year.
 
Further, the rights in musical works belonging to MACP subsist until 50 years after the death of the composers, whilst those of sound recordings belonging to PPM only subsist for 50 years after the recording is made. As an example, if P Ramlee recorded a song in 1950, the musical works rights would subsist for 50 years after his death in 1973, which means that the copyright of the musical work is still enforceable until 2023 (50 years after he died) and those using his works would be liable to pay for use of his musical work (MACP) in public. However the copyright for the sound recording made in 1950, would cease to be in effect 50 years after the recording, which is the year 2000. So from 2000 to 2023 MACP would still have the right to collect royalties on the song, but PPM would have 23 years less in which to collect royalties on the same song, as it had passed into public domain (became public property to use without charge) in the year 2000.
 
This would mean that at any one time, MACP would have a much larger body of works under copyright protection as compared to PPM. This being the case there should be no way in which PPM has the right to collect an equal amount or even more royalties than MACP as PPM’s rights are far less when compared to MACP’s. This is also the reason why the government had implemented the 2:1:1 ratio for MACP’s, PPM’s and RPM’s collections. We feel this is totally justified given the differences in rights between MACP and the two other bodies.
 
We are in total disbelief that the MACP members on MRM’s Board voted to dismantle MRM, when it is clearly advantageous to MACP to allow MRM to continue their operations, as MACP was getting the lion’s share of royalties (50%) as compared to the other two organizations, and justifiably so.
 
We feel this is highly questionable, where a body votes for a decision that will put itself and its members at a disadvantageous position and Karyawan has issued a statement calling for the MACC to investigate this matter thoroughly. 
 
Given the above reasons and the possibility of future Ministers awarding more licences to various new collecting bodies that may spring up due to the possibility of profiteering (such as we witnessed prior to the setting up of MRM), we would like the government to strongly reconsider the closure of MRM and hereby request the reinstatement of MRM with immediate effect as the single collection body for public performances of music.
 
We would like to recommend that as a further cost saving measure, MRM is not only given the right to collect royalties for the 3 parties under the Copyright Act, but also handle the distribution of the royalties to the members of the 3 bodies for whose works they have collected royalties. In this way the cost savings would be maximized and it would ensure that members would get a much higher royalty payment each year as savings are achieved with a single collection body and now a single distribution system. The 3 bodies would only have to exist to register new members and manage the administration and control over members. They could share a common staff and use the MRM offices for their administration, a further cost saving that would see even higher amounts of royalties money being passed on to members.
 
We call upon the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs to immediately reinstate MRM as the single collection body for the public performance of music for all rightsholders, as well as to extend MRM’s functions to cover distribution of royalties as well as collection, resulting in huge cost saving and a maximization of royatlies to be given back to the members of the 3 bodies. – The Vibes, November 3, 2020
 
Persatuan Karyawan Malaysia
October 28, 2020