IFPI
Encyclopedia
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a not-for-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. It operates a Secretariat based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, with regional offices in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

 and Miami.

Function

Its stated mission is to promote the value of recorded music, safeguard the rights of record producers and expand the commercial uses of recorded music. Its services to members include legal policy advice (lobbying), anti-piracy enforcement, litigation and regulatory affairs, market research and communications support.

Structure

Frances Moore was appointed the chief executive of IFPI with a term effective from 1 July 2010. She replaced John Kennedy OBE, who had headed the organisation since 2005 and was also one of the co-producers of Live Aid
Live Aid
Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom ...

 and Live8.

The IFPI is currently based in Piccadilly in the City of Westminster
City of Westminster
The City of Westminster is a London borough occupying much of the central area of London, England, including most of the West End. It is located to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary...

 in London, England.

Scope of influence

IFPI represents the recording industry worldwide with some 1,400 members in 66 countries and affiliated industry associations in 45 countries. According to the IFPI, "any company, firm or person producing sound recordings or music videos which are made available to the public in reasonable quantities is eligible for membership of IFPI", though the company does not specify what "reasonable quantities" actually means.

National groups and affiliate bodies include SNEP in France, Bundesverband Musikindustrie in Germany, RIAJ in Japan, BPI
British Phonographic Industry
The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies...

 in the UK and RIAA in the US. Although recognised as an "affiliated group", the RIAA on its own website specifically notes that IFPI administers programs "for a number of countries, excluding the United States". Record labels can be members of both their local industry body and IFPI.

Phonogram performance rights

The IFPI was formed as the phonographic industry held its first international congress in Rome, 10–14 November 1933 and registered its head office
Head Office
Head Office is a 1985 American comedy film, produced by HBO Pictures in association with Silver Screen Partners. It stars Judge Reinhold, Eddie Albert, Lori-Nan Engler, Jane Seymour, Richard Masur, Michael O'Donoghue, Ron Frazier, Merritt Butrick and was directed and written by Ken...

 in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland. Its mission was to represent "the interests of the recording industry worldwide in all fora" by promoting legislation and copyrights and "to protect the largely British-based recording industry" by promoting a global performance right in gramophone sound recordings.

Phonogram copyrights

The IFPI heavily lobbied at the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations of 1961, which established an international standard for the protection of sound recordings, live performances & broadcasts. This Convention was opposed by trade groups representing authors and composers, who were concerned that establishing such "neighbouring rights
Related rights
Related rights is a term in copyright law, used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". The term neighbouring rights is exactly equivalent, and is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Related rights in civil law are similar to authors' rights, but are not connected...

" would undermine their own control over how their works were used and would result in prohibitively expensive licensing. Pressure from broadcasters who didn't want to license the records they broadcast, among other factors, kept the U.S. from signing the Convention; the U.S. did not recognise a separate sound recording copyright until 1971.

Phonogram anti-piracy

The IFPI then began a campaign against piracy. In 1971 it succeeded in advocating and obtaining the Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms (the Geneva Phonograms Convention), which 72 countries signed.

In 1986, the ISO
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...

 established the International Standard Recording Code
International Standard Recording Code
The International Standard Recording Code , defined by ISO 3901, is an international standard code for uniquely identifying sound recordings and music video recordings. IFPI has been appointed by ISO as registration authority for this standard. The ISO technical committee 46, subcommittee 9 is...

 (ISRC) standard, ISO 3901. In 1989, the IFPI was designated the registration authority for ISRC codes. ISRC codes "enable the use of copyright protected recordings and works to be controlled; facilitate the distribution and collection of royalties (performances, private copying); and assist in the fight against piracy."

In 1994, in an effort to combat piracy, the IFPI and the compact disc manufacturing industry introduced Source Identification (SID) codes, which are markings on CD parts that identify the manufacturers, equipment, and master discs that were used to create each disc.

SID codes are formatted as the letters "IFPI" followed by 4 or 5 hexadecimal digits. A SID-marked disc typically bears at least two codes, each imprinted on different physical components. A number prefaced with "L" is a "mastering code," a serial number taken from a pool assigned by Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....

 to the manufacturer. It identifies the Laser Beam Recorder (LBR) signal processor or mold that produced a particular stamper or a glass master disc from which molds are produced. Non-"L" numbers are "mold codes", the first 2 or 3 digits of which are assigned by Philips to the operator of the manufacturing or mastering plant, which might not be the same plant that manufactured the stamper or glass master; and the remaining digits are a serial number assigned by that plant to its molds.

The Pirate Bay incidents

In mid-October 2007, after the IFPI let the ifpi.com domain registration lapse, ownership of the ifpi.com domain was transferred to The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...

, a group which claimed it received the domain from an anonymous donor. The group set up a Website under the domain titled "International Federation of Pirates Interests," a replacement backronym for IFPI. Ownership of the domain was returned to the IFPI in late November, when a WIPO
World Intellectual Property Organization
The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the 17 specialized agencies of the United Nations. WIPO was created in 1967 "to encourage creative activity, to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world"....

 arbitration panel concluded that "the Disputed Domain Name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark in which the [IFPI] has rights" and that the Pirate Bay's representative "registered and [was] using the Disputed Domain Name in bad faith" and failed to adequately rebut the IFPI's contention that he "has no rights or a legitimate interest in the Disputed Domain Name." The organisation's website www.ifpi.org was unaffected during the dispute.

In a separate incident, on the 18th February 2009, the Swedish ifpi.se domain was hacked by The Pirate Bay sympathiser(s). This occurred on the third day of the trial of the Pirate Bay founders in Sweden. The site was replaced with a short message directed at the Prosecutor Håkan Roswall and plaintiffs ("Warner Brothers etc"). It was signed "The New Generation". Peter Sunde of Pirate Bay made an appeal on Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 requesting that the hackers stop this defacement.

On 19 April 2009, after the announcement of an unfavorable Swedish court decision against The Pirate Bay, the ifpi.org and ifpi.se domains were reportedly subjected to a DDoS attack. The newspaper The Register
The Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...

and the BitTorrent community site TorrentFreak speculated that the attacks were perpetrated by Pirate Bay supporters.

Record sales certification

The IFPI awards two album sales certifications
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...

, the IFPI Platinum Europe Awards and the IFPI Middle East Awards.

The IFPI Platinum Europe Awards were founded in 1996. They are awarded for actual retail sales (as opposed to shipments) of one million albums, in one of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom. An archive of past winners is available online.

The IFPI Middle East Awards were established in October 2009. They are awarded for sales in either the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, or in Lebanon. in the GCC, Gold award is awarded for sales of 3,000 units and Platinum for sales of 6,000 units. In Lebanon, Gold award is awarded for sales of 1,000 units and Platinum for sales of 2,000 units. An archive of past winners is also available online.

See also

  • Music industry
  • Record label
    Record label
    In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

  • Related rights
    Related rights
    Related rights is a term in copyright law, used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". The term neighbouring rights is exactly equivalent, and is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Related rights in civil law are similar to authors' rights, but are not connected...

  • Peer-to-peer file sharing
    Peer-to-peer file sharing
    P2P or Peer-to-peer file sharing allows users to download files such as music, movies, and games using a P2P software client that searches for other connected computers. The "peers" are computer systems connected to each other through internet. Thus, the only requirements for a computer to join...

  • List of music recording certifications

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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