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The Recording lndustry Association of Vietnam (RIAV) established in November 2003, mainly aimed to protect the legal rights and duties of its members - compact disk and tape producers. For the main duty of protecting rights and legitimate benefits of its members, RIAV issued the tariff for using production in October 2007, signed contracts with several music business entities on using products of its member in March and April, 2008, and warned companies that were currently using products illegally by official dispatches, but at the same time encouraged them to negotiate with RIAV to get the license. These are the achievements resulted from RIAV’s efforts in protecting its legal rights.
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The collective management model is being used by RIAV, which has been widely applied in other developed countries but still new in Vietnam. In this model, RIAV on behalf of its members will negotiate and reach to an agreement about the tariff, as well as other rights and duties, then distribute the collected royalties in such an unanimous way approved before with the ones who demand to consume their products.
There has been a growing concern about RIAV’s functions. Reference to the existing legal documents, recording companies generally are capable of exercising the rights to their music products. However, as a matter of fact, controlling the use of music or negotiating separately with each user has been proven to be very difficult. As music piracy is still common to music businesses in Vietnam, it is very costly for each recoding company to go after copyright infringement.
Besides, a collective management model will be also helpful in producing and using commercial and cultural music products. Since the association is well-organized, the recording companies will receive an amount of money they deserve to, which can ensure its turnover, reproduction and production development. As a result, music products brought to the consumers are well-prepared not only in forms but also in contents. In addition, it is cost-saving for the individuals who are keen on getting involved in music business if they negotiate with RIAV, but not each other music company instead, due to the legal use of music products they are given under the control of this association.
RIAV's international cooperative activities, such as joining and contributing opinions to international workshops like the Asia-Pacific Regional Symposium on Emerging Issues of Copyright and Related Rights in the Audiovisual Industry, ASEAN-USPTO Workshop on copyright in the digital environment and collective management in copyright, v.v… organizing courses together with IFPI in order to learn and update experiences in protecting right management and anti piracy in the digital environment.
In conclusion, it is very necessary to maintain, as well as to support, the activities for RIAV. During the process of answering interpellations about the integration into WTO, Vietnam representatives declared that the collective management organizations would carry out the royalty collection based on the delegation of authority from the music product owners. To future, RIAV itself and other collective management organizations in general will become “effective tools” in keeping the intellectual property law legally enforced, due to the requirement of tightening its rules. This is supposed to be an information channel for the Government in evaluating the effectiveness of existing law institutions, creating the future suitable institutions and ensuring the aim of building a legitimate state.
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