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The Cultural Commons Collecting Society SCE mbH, abbreviated as C3S is a European Cooperative Society which aims to create a Collecting Society for music.
The project is currently coordinated and operated by OpenMusicContest.org, a Düsseldorf-based association which considered it necessary to create a Collecting Society that would compete with GEMA which currently holds a monopoly on music licensing. C3S aims to be different from GEMA: All C3S members are allowed to vote in the members' assembly and will be able to choose which of their works they want to have handled by C3S and under which licenses. Accounting is intended to be fully automated.
Initial funding for the project came from a crowd funding campaign that yielded 119,000 €. The project also got a positive rating at the "Digitales Medienland NRW" innovation competition. As a result of this, C3S will receive 200,000 € of government funds from the state of Northrine-Westphalia if they manage to collect another 200,000 € themselves.
On the 25th of September 2013, C3S was founded as a European Cooperative Society in Hamburg. C3S plans to file a license application with the German Patent and Trademark Office in 2015.