Streaming, Remuneration Rights, and the Amazon-Chileactores Case

By Arturo Covarrubias y Mariano Wood, Covarrubias

The ruling by Santiago’s First Civil Court ordering Amazon.com Services LLC to pay Chileactores over US$7 million opens a discussion that goes beyond streaming and actors’ rights: what the court has established is the effective operability of a collection system that reaches any company exploiting protected works in Chile without a prior agreement with the relevant collective management organization.

But what is a remuneration right? A remuneration right is a statutory payment obligation that arises whenever certain commercial uses are made of protected works or performances, even if the party exploiting them has already acquired the economic rights or made an initial payment to the creator. The law recognizes that a film, a song, or a phonogram is not a static asset: each window of exploitation (cinema, television, streaming, radio, commercial soundtracking, and so on) generates additional value that must be paid to those who took part in the creative chain. The right exists independently of the original contract and, in several cases, is non-waivable: neither a buy-out nor a full assignment of rights can extinguish it.

In Chile, this mechanism operates across the board. SCD administers the rights of authors and music artists vis-à-vis commercial venues, radio stations, hotels, and digital platforms. Chileactores represents audiovisual performers vis-à-vis broadcasters, cinemas, and streaming services. DYGA and ATN manage the rights of phonogram and audiovisual producers. All of these collective management organizations publish tariffs in the Official Gazette under Article 100 of Law No. 17,336, represent both national and foreign repertoires, and have standing to bring collection claims in court. The party liable for payment is the user exploiting the work, not the producer who created it. That rule applies to Amazon, and it applies equally to a retail chain that plays music in its stores.

The Amazon case falls specifically under Law No. 20,243, which governs the rights of audiovisual performers. Its Article 3 provides that the performer, “even after the assignment of their economic rights, shall retain the non-waivable and non-transferable right to receive remuneration” for, among other acts, “making the work available through interactive digital means.” Article 4 completes the framework: payment is “enforceable against whoever carries out” that act of making available and can be collected through the relevant collective management organization. Chileactores had published tariffs since 2014 — 2% of the revenue generated by the activity — updated from January 2021 to 3.6% for interactive digital means. Amazon neither paid nor submitted to the mediation and arbitration procedure set out in Law 17,336. The result is the first-instance ruling handed down on May 29, 2026 in case file C-12.860-2023.

This outcome has a history. As early as 2009, Chileactores published its tariffs and invited free-to-air television channels to negotiate individually. The channels responded collectively through Anatel with a counteroffer that the organization rejected. Civil actions against TVN, Chilevisión, Canal 13, and Megavisión followed. Chile’s National Economic Prosecutor’s Office investigated whether the channels’ joint negotiation amounted to collusion and closed the case, concluding that the law itself — Article 100, fourth paragraph, of Law 17,336 — authorizes user associations to enter into tariff agreements with collective management organizations and to take part as a party in mediation and arbitration. The episode matters because it reveals a pattern that has held for more than fifteen years: the organization publishes its tariffs, invites negotiation, and if no agreement is reached and the user resists, the dispute escalates to the courts. The same dynamic plays out regularly between SCD and commercial establishments, or between phonographic entities and radio stations. Given its scale, Amazon is simply the largest-scale version of a dynamic that has long been built into the Chilean legal system.

In the courts, the immediate precedent is Chileactores v. Cineplanet (case file C-7.076-2023, Fourth Civil Court of Santiago), where the cinema chain was ordered to pay approximately 2,300 UF for publicly communicating repertoire works without an agreement, applying the same tiered tariffs. Cineplanet raised a procedural objection to the complaint, which was rejected, and the Santiago Court of Appeals declared its subsidiary appeal inadmissible. Out-of-court settlements with Netflix and Zapping have also been reported, suggesting that a negotiated route was available — one that Amazon either rejected or failed to pursue successfully.

In comparative terms, Chile aligns with models that recognize a statutory remuneration right surviving the assignment of rights. In Spain, Article 108 of the consolidated Intellectual Property Law (TRLPI) establishes a non-waivable right of audiovisual performers to equitable remuneration for making works available, managed by AISGE. Colombia, through Law 1403 of 2010 (the “Fanny Mikey Law”), establishes equitable remuneration for the public communication of audiovisual works, collected through collective management. The United States has no legal equivalent: that function is fulfilled by SAG-AFTRA residuals, which are structured contractually and whose inadequacy in the face of streaming was at the heart of the recent Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes. The distinction matters operationally: a global platform accustomed to resolving these matters through union bargaining in one country may find itself facing non-waivable statutory rights and judicially enforceable tariffs in another.

The practical implications of the ruling are not limited to streaming or to actors. Pending finality of the judgment, what has been validated is the entire framework of Chile’s remuneration rights system: a tariff published in the Official Gazette, an organization with standing to sue, direct negotiation as a first step, and judicially enforceable collection against the user — confirming the premise that this right is not extinguished by contractual assignment. That same framework applies to a hotel offering in-room television, an app that syncs music, a digital outlet that incorporates phonograms, or an event organizer streaming audiovisual content. All of these are users within the meaning of the law, and all face the risk of retroactive collection if they lack current agreements with the relevant organizations.

Artificial intelligence adds a further layer of complexity. Platforms already use algorithms to determine what content is shown, to whom, and how often — which feeds directly into the calculation base for any percentage-based tariff. But the problem intensifies when AI is involved in creating the content itself: dubbing generated through voice synthesis, performances replicated through deepfakes, music composed by models trained on protected catalogs, and motion-capture performances reproduced without the original performer’s involvement. Does the remuneration right survive when a performance was used as training input? Who is the rights holder when the performance is partly synthetic? Can a collective management organization claim tariffs over content where the line between human creation and algorithmic generation is blurred? Collective management organizations will face the challenge of adapting their representation models, repertoire identification, and royalty distribution to this new environment, while businesses and users will face the challenge of understanding when and how each work is being exploited.

The ruling against Amazon is a first-instance decision, and its progress should be followed closely. But for creative industries and users of protected works, it offers a preview of how the enforcement of remuneration for those who take part in the creative chain will look going forward.

Companies that work through this equation, accept this legal reality, and can quantify the full value of these uses will be well positioned to agree on fair tariffs with collective management organizations.