РАО

РАО (RAO, Russian Authors' Society, Российское авторское общество, Общероссийская общественная организация «Российское Авторское Общество») is a non-governmental organization, created by authors for copyright and intellectual property rights protection. The Statute of The Organization was registered in the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation on September 30th, 1993. Major focus of RAO activities is management of Authors’ rights on collective basis in cases while their practical implementation in an individual order is complicated (the public performance, broadcasting and cable retransmission). RAO Principal Functions are collection, distribution and payment of Authors’ remuneration for different kinds of use of musical works. RAO administers property rights of authors and other rightowners basing on relevant membership contracts and by virtue of state accreditation. Today RAO has over 26,000 membership contracts. At the moment RAO signed 182 reciprocal representation contracts with 117 Societies of 68 countries. As a result RAO represents interests of nearly all Russian Authors and more than 2 million of foreign rightowners. RAO is a CISAC member since 1993. RAO has a wide regional structure which includes 11 regional offices and over 200 inspectors in different regions of Russia.