CISAC, the world federation of author and publisher collective management organizations, released a blockbuster 2023 Global Collections Report on October 26.

There appears to be no resolution in sight in the battle between Meta, Google and the Canadian Government over the latter’s recent legislative attempt to protect the financial interests of Canadian online news providers.

Creative works have been around for centuries, arguably millennia. Except for some pioneering countries, the modern recognition and management of creators’ rights is only 100 years old. It is less than a century ago in 1926 with the founding of CISAC (the world federation of organizations representing the rights of Creators in all genres and of music publishers (www.cisac.org)), that rights holders and their collectives truly recognized that the international circulation of creative works required a global framework that would enable all rights managers to work together across borders and oceans, with the purpose of accurately paying rightsholders for their creative works.

Bruce Springsteen noted in his 2016 autobiography that he was one of the few artists who owned everything he ever created. “All my records are mine. All my songs are mine. It’s rare and it’s a good feeling”. Last year he cashed in a $500 million dollar cheque from Sony Music in exchange for his song recordings and publishing rights, which must have had the Boss feeling pretty good as well.