BERLIN: Trust Robin Gibb to shoot straight from the hip. Speaking at the opening ceremony of Popkomm 2008, the fromer BeeGees lead singer writer said he had no idea about IPR when he used to produce music. "My brothers and I never thought of money and IPR and rights when we wrote and created music. We did it because we loved it."

But now that he was the president of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, he had a job to do, that of protecting authors' rights and helping them monitise them. He announced that his organisation, which represents 228 collecting societies from 118 countries, had appealed on 3 October against the European Commission´s decision of 16 July in the Court of the First Instance of the European Communities, along with 24 other author societies in the European economic Area. The EC had on 16 July decided that the current system of territorial restrictions in music licensing infringes existing EU competition law.

"There is a perfectly good and practical reason that each bilateral reciprocal agreements have territorial restrictions. It has nothing to do with concerted or anticompetition practices. It is at this point that societies are pushed into competing by a race to the bottom on royalty values and rates. This would do incalculable harm to the writer community," he said. Gibb was clear that the EC´s decision was not acceptable and that it would be challenged.

Cisac has requested that Article 3 of the EC determining that 24 of CISACs EEA-based ´societies engaged in a concerted practice in violation of Article 81 EC and Article 51 EEA "by coordinating the territorial delineations (of the reciprocal representation mandates granted to each other) in a way which limits a licence to the domestic territory of each collecting society."

Broadcasters and internet companies have been arguing that single national societies should be able to complete multilateral multiterritorial agreements with broadcasters, cable and satellite and internet companies. Cisac has been saying that this is not possible.

In 1999, the German RTL Group solicited the German collecting society Gema for a multi-territory rights clearance process for the worldwide repertoire – to no avail. In November 2000, RTL Group filed a complaint with the European Commission, arguing that the current practice infringed existing EU competition law.

In January 2006, the European Commission issued a "Statement of Objections" against Cisac (the "International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers") and its members within the European Economic Area (EEA), finding that the contractual restrictions among European collecting societies infringe EU Competition rules as they prevent competition in rights administration services.

Earlier in the day, the opening ceremony of Popkomm 2008 took place in the presence of a hall full of music professionals in Berlin's Messe Palais. Present at the occasion were Messe Berlin CEO Raimund Hosch, Bernd Neumann the state minister of culture and media, the international confideration of societies of authors and composers president Robin Gibb, Turkish secretary in the ministry of culture Nihat Gul and the mayor of Berlin Harald Wolf.

All were of the opinion that the music industry is undergoing change, and solutions have to be found to keep it going, and even growing further. Gibb said that he was opposed to the EC´s decision which nailed CISAC´s members as being antitrust and anticompetition especially as far as rights multiterritorial licensing for broadcasting, internet, satellite and cable are concerned.

The Turkish secretary said he was happy to be at Popkomm as Berlin has the highest concentration of Turks outside of Turkey and it was a proud moment to partner Popkomm as the country of focus.

Both Neumann and Wolf expressed concern about piracy and said Popkomm is becoming more and more international with many foreign studios and labels making their way to Berlin.