MOSCOW, May 26 (RAPSI) – The State Duma has adopted government bills on the regulation of organizations dealing with collective management of author’s rights in the first reading, the database of the lower house of the Russian parliament reads on Friday.

The bills introduce changes to the Civil Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses and affect Russian Authors’ Society, Russian Organization for Intellectual Property, and Russian Union of Right-holders.

According to the bills, government-approved organizations managing authors’ rights on a collective scale must share extensive amounts of information regarding their methods of obtaining and distributing royalties, as well as their organizational structures, including information pertaining to the activities of their special funds. Right-holders are to be informed about royalties collected in their favor via their individual accounts on the Internet.

Organizations to be subject to the proposed regulation are to carry out obligatory annual audits of their financial reports publishing the respective documents online, the bills read. A failure to publish the reports and audit results should be administratively liable, whereas the monitoring of such violations is to be vested with the Ministry of Culture, according to the bills. An additional control mechanism should be special councils for supervision of financial and economic activities of the organizations.