besides a few formalities that we had to deal with till the end of the year, there was also the opportunity to speak at the general assembly in early December about the current status of the approval process and to demonstrate the repertoire management portal.
Approval Process
The approval process has proven to be a longer evolutionary process that has so far largely revolved around our statutes. Lastly, we had to do some rework, e.g. to regulate the membership status of copyright associations or owners of derivative rights in accordance with the regulatory interpretation of the German ‘Verwertungsgesellschaftengesetz’ (Collecting Societies Act, VGG; remember that we first have to comply with a national collecting societies legislation and being approved there before we can start to operate on an European scale). At last, we believe that we have found a viable compromise between our vision of a collecting society of authors and the demands of the VGG. In the new year, we therefore want to focus on preparing for the start of business operations.
Repertoire Management Portal
After completing the internal beta test of the Repertoire Management Portal, our development team has already implemented some tester feedback.
So that even those of you who could not come to the General Assembly get an impression of the portal, we have made a small screencast that shows the essential features:
In the next step, we will gradually extend the beta test to our members and start working on the event registration portal in parallel.