A Copyright collective (also known as a copyright collecting agency or collecting society) is a body created by private agreements or by copyright law that collects royalty payments from various individuals and groups for copyright holders. They may have the authority to license works and collect royalties as part of a statutory scheme or by entering into an agreement with the copyright owner to represent the owners interests when dealing with licensees and potential licensees.
In the U.S. and Canada, when dealing with works that are performed such as music these groups are called performance rights organisations or PROs. Other organizations such as artist rights groups license and collect royalties for the reproduction of paintings of living or recently deceased artists whose work has not yet entered the public domain. There are also collectives that collect royalties for copies from magazines and scholarly journals such as Access copyright in Canada.
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