<b><i>Commentary:</b></i> Comparing Collective Licensing Proposals For Internet Licensing of Copyrighted Content

While there have been many proposals for collective rights licensing schemes, most proposals fall into two camps: a legislatively introduced public right or a privately implemented opt-in arrangement. Under the former, the government-mandated public right is collected as a payment on a user's ISP or mobile phone bill and distributed through a third-party organization to rights holders. Under the latter, rights holders would sign a covenant not to sue any user who opts-in to pay licensing fees for content accessed by that user.

Collective rights licensing regimes have long existed in the United States. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the first performance rights organization (PRO), was created to handle the collection and distribution of public performance royalties for its members' musical compositions. Another major PRO, Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), requires a license for its rights-holders songs. SESAC, a third PRO, does so, too. ASCAP and BMI currently represent the majority of songwriters and music publishers, with SESAC licensing about 1% of all performance rights in the United States.