Technologies have always been natural catalysts of change, but the digital technologies of our time have surely transformed social, cultural, and economic interaction faster and more deeply than it has ever happened in any society throughout history. The impact of collaboration tools in the activity of creating intellectual content transformed the way collective management organizations operate and current market requirements demand legal adaptation to face this new reality. Collecting societies are important players in the content industry, and a number of relevant issues are addressed in the ongoing redesigning process of the legal model in which they operate, many of which are not even superficially discussed in this work, like strictly illegal or non-commercial uses, exceptions or protection of cultural heritage, for this would exceed its scope as it was delimited, that is to say, issues of competition, transparency, and multi-territorial licensing of rights over online protected works that are collectively managed.

A whole new social architecture communicates, interacts, demands, produces, and distributes information and impacts on the exercise of creativity and on other general aspects of cultural expression and intellectual property issues. It surely has various repercussions in aspects of production of intellectual content. Wide sharing and collaboration possibilities that technologies introduce in the social interaction promote the creation of intellectual content from various perspectives. This new environment is a tool, not a fight or an object in itself, which people—the real protagonists of changes—should explore to reach their goals. It’s a catalyst, not an aim.