Abstract
Thank you for the invitation. It is a pleasure for me to speak on the topic of extended collective licenses (“ECL”), a model for managing copyright which is typical for Scandinavian countries. Although my Danish is a bit rusty—not to speak of my Swedish—I come from Belgium, a country which is neither a Nordic nor a Southern European country, but which at least has a strong experience with collective bargaining. It is difficult to understand the model of ECLs without the background of collective bargaining (in a country like the United States, private agreements rather than collective bargaining do play a prominent role). Belgian culture in the field of industrial relations is one in which labor issues are solved with collective agreements; this is possible because of the existence of very strong organizations representing employers and employees and the possibility for the collective agreements concluded between those organizations to be extended by law to third parties. The ECL model relies on the willingness and experience of parties to engage in collective bargaining.
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