The relevance of copyright for Norwaco’s activities

Copyright is at the outset an exclusive right, and those who have contributed to a production own a copyright to the work.

The rightholders’ exclusive right

The Norwegian Copyright Act gives rightholders an exclusive right to produce copies and to make the copies available to the general public. This entails that others who want to use copyrighted material must obtain the consent of the rightholder.

Many rightholders – one agreement

Because a plethora of rightholders are involved in audiovisual productions, it is time-consuming and complicated to obtain the consent of all of them. In order to facilitate the clearing of rights, TV distributors and the education sector (and e.g. media monitoring services) may obtain consent to distribute television channels and copy broadcasting programmes for use in education, through Norwaco, on behalf of creators, cinematographers, producers and performers. Norwaco represents the entire range of rightholders in Norway, and it will in most cases, suffice to make one single agreement through us, in order to use audiovisual works in the ways mentioned here.

Extended collective licence

Through the extended collective licence , Norwaco also represents rightholders who are not directly affiliated with any of our member organisations, including foreign rightholders.

Norwaco’s role

Both remuneration and the area of use will be regulated by the agreement, and Norwaco takes care of collection and distribution to the rightholders.