Extended Collective Licenses and the Nordic Experience - It’s a Hybrid but is It a Volvo or a Lemon?

An extended collective license is a legal model whereby the binding effect of a collective agreement between an organization of copyright holders and a user of copyrightable works is extended to right holders who are not members of the organization. Such models have been used for rights clearance in the Nordic countries since the early 1960s. Extended collective licenses are praised by the Nordic countries and met with positive interest around the world as the primary means to solve most of the copyright complications in the information society. This article evaluates extended collective licenses and their compatibility with international copyright norms and the perspective of transplanting the model into other jurisdictions