The subject of 38 UAH of royalty paid to the spouse of Andriy Kuzmenko, the front man of the band “Skryabin”, is being talked over for nearly a month. Let’s get this straightened out together.

The rights for the songs of “Skryabin” band are managed by two organizations –  “Ukrainian Agency of Copyright and Related Rights” (UACRR) and the publisher MOON Records. It means that each organization collects royalties only for the songs the rights of which it was granted by the author. Once or twice a year Kuzma came to UACRR to receive his earnings, accrued from the payments of different users.   It is to say, that, for example, one tiny radio station paid 38 UAH for Kuzma’s songs for a period of a month, the rights of which are managed by UACRR. This is where this amount came from. One report of one company, no more no less. And the annual copyright revenue consists of numerous reports from different radio stations, television channels and other commercial users. Therefore the final royalty amount collected by UACRR for the repertoire of the band “Skryabin” for Andriy Kuzmenko is almost hundreds times more.

The family of Andriy Kuzmenko has the right to receive inheritance; consequently UACRR has concluded a respective agreement and completely fulfilled its obligations (we do not have the right to announce the exact amount due to the privacy policy). So the story on 38 UAH is just an extract from the report and it is not a total amount of the collected royalties for the used works of the author.  

“A good thing is this situation came up now and we have a chance to make it clear how the royalties are accrued. Perhaps now, with the attention to the problem, we will manage to reform the system of payments of copyright and related rights. Just imagine that for a moment there are 19 CMOs in Ukraine that do not report to the authors to the full extent. And how to demand anything from them?” – commented Dmytro Kostiuk, Collective Management Director of UACRR.

-         The situation can be changed only

through the legislation – after the adoption of the draft Law “On collective management of proprietary rights of subjects of copyright and related rights”. This draft law was worked out by State Intellectual Property Service together with European and American experts. Last spring it was directed to the relevant ministry. The ministry had to submit it for consideration of the Government. However as far as I know the draft law on the CMOs hasn’t been provided to the Parliament yet, – underlined Mr. Kostiuk.