Deal sheet
- Status
- In force since 10 August 2026 (Bulletin Officiel n°7533), under the dahir of 28 July 2026. No implementing decree setting a fee schedule for the folklore/public-domain provision has been identified by this desk as of this record's publication. No amendment or legal challenge is reported in either source read.
- Type
- Licensing
- Parties
- Bureau Marocain du Droit d’Auteur
- Amount
- Not applicable (no amount disclosed) Not disclosed in either document this desk could fetch and read. No royalty rate, flat fee or other monetary figure for the new folklore/public-domain charge appears in the government's own account of the bill or in the independently verified report on the law's entry into force. A third report, surfaced only in search-result summaries and attributed to a different outlet, appeared to describe a specific numbered provision and a cultural-industries fee; this desk could not fetch that report directly (HTTP 403 on repeated attempts, including with a browser user-agent string) and does not rely on any of its specific figures here.
- Rights covered
- Not a transfer of any specific catalogue, master recording or publishing right. A change in statutory collection authority: Law n°13.26 adds, for the first time identified in the two documents this desk fetched and read in full, explicit rules on "the exploitation of folklore as well as works whose term of protection has expired" — legal language for the public domain. This extends the Bureau Marocain du Droit d'Auteur's (BMDA, called BMDAV in its own recent public communications) authority to require authorization and collect fees into music that had already left copyright protection, under the same ordinary 70-year post-mortem term the office itself described in a December 2025 public clarification. Neither document read specifies a rate, a payer, or an assessment mechanism for the new charge.
- Territory
- Morocco. Both documents this desk could fetch and read frame the reform partly around Morocco's role in hosting matches for the 2030 World Cup, but the statute itself is domestic law; no other country's legal framework or institution is named as a party in either source.
- Announced
- 2026-08-10
- Primary document
- Official newsroom
- Sources
- Morocco's official government portal (maroc.ma), article headlined "Le projet de loi relatif aux droits d'auteur vise a adapter la legislation nationale aux evolutions du numerique," reporting remarks presented in parliament on 30 June 2026 by the Minister of Youth, Culture and Communication, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid. Fetched and read in full. States the bill "vise a adapter la legislation nationale aux evolutions du numerique," that it builds a framework "au diapason des echeances sportives majeures, notamment la Coupe du monde 2030," that it strengthens BMDAV's role in "suivi, d'autorisation d'exploitation et de perception des redevances," and that it sets rules on "l'exploitation du folklore ainsi que des oeuvres dont la duree de protection est arrivee a expiration." · Hespress Francais, report on the law's entry into force. Fetched and read in full. States the promulgating text is "dahir n° 1.26.68 du 28 juillet 2026," published in "Bulletin officiel n° 7533 du 10 aout 2026," defines piracy as "toute exploitation non autorisee d'une oeuvre, d'une prestation artistique ou d'un enregistrement sonore ou audiovisuel… quel que soit le support utilise," and ties the reform to "la Coupe du monde 2030" via Minister Bensaid's remarks. · Le Brief, 8 December 2025, report on a BMDAV public clarification issued in response to social-media criticism of its levies. Fetched and read in full. States heirs "continuent d'en beneficier durant soixante-dix ans avant que celle-ci n'entre dans le domaine public," and cites "Loi n°25.19" and "Article 60 de la loi n°2.00" as the basis for BMDAV's exclusive mandate to collect and distribute author's rights — read by this desk as describing the ordinary public-domain cutoff, with no claim in this account of continued collection after that point.
Read this before citing: Recorded rather than smoothed over. First, no document this desk fetched and read states a rate, payer or assessment mechanism for the new folklore/public-domain charge; a third report attributed to a different outlet and describing a specific numbered provision and fee could not be fetched directly despite repeated attempts (HTTP 403, including with a browser user-agent string), and none of its specific claims are used here. Second, whether the provision reaches works already in the public domain before the law's 10 August 2026 effective date, or only those entering it afterward, is not addressed in either source this desk verified; this desk does not assume either answer. Third, the two primary accounts read do not state that BMDA formally renamed itself BMDAV; this record treats BMDA and BMDAV as the same body because both verified primary documents use "BMDAV" for the office this directory's company record lists as BMDA, but no single source read confirms a renaming directly. Fourth, an earlier search pass surfaced an AI-generated summary of a different outlet's account of the same December 2025 clarification that appeared to describe BMDAV already claiming a right to collect past the public-domain cutoff; that outlet's page could not be fetched directly by this desk, and the one account this desk could independently verify describes the opposite, an ordinary 70-year cutoff. This record relies only on the verified account.
On 10 August 2026, Morocco’s official gazette published a new copyright statute, Law n°13.26, promulgated by Dahir n°1.26.68 of 28 July 2026 and amending the kingdom’s existing 2000 copyright act. Buried inside a reform pitched publicly as a digital-piracy crackdown ahead of the 2030 World Cup is a narrower, less-noticed provision: for the first time identified in the texts this desk could read, the law sets rules on “the exploitation of folklore as well as works whose term of protection has expired.” That is legal language for the public domain, and it hands Morocco’s copyright office new ground to stand on in an argument it had been making, informally, only months before.
A law built for a World Cup, with a public-domain clause inside it
The bill was presented to parliament on 30 June 2026 by the Minister of Youth, Culture and Communication, who framed it in the government’s own account as an update to “adapt national legislation to digital developments,” one built to handle disputes “in step with major sporting deadlines, notably the 2030 World Cup.” A separately published account of the law’s entry into force describes the core piracy provisions directly: an explicit definition of piracy as “any unauthorized exploitation of a work, an artistic performance or a sound or audiovisual recording… regardless of the medium used,” new powers for courts to order the suspension of infringing activity, and investigating agents empowered to seize equipment and documents tied to suspected violations.
Those are the headline items, and they read as a conventional anti-piracy update aimed at streaming boxes and pirated broadcasts of World Cup matches. The government’s own account, though, also states that the law strengthens the Bureau Marocain du Droit d’Auteur (BMDA, referred to as BMDAV in its own recent public communications) specifically in “monitoring, authorizing exploitation and collecting royalties,” and separately sets rules on works whose protection has already expired. Neither of the two documents this desk fetched and read in full states a royalty rate, a flat fee or any other figure attached to that provision. What they establish is the principle, not the price.
Eight months earlier, the same office described the opposite cutoff
In December 2025, BMDA faced public criticism, amplified on social media, that characterized its collection activity as an “illegal tax.” The office responded with a public clarification. One account of that response, fetched and read in full by this desk, states that an author’s heirs “continue to benefit from it for seventy years before it enters the public domain,” and grounds BMDA’s authority to collect and distribute royalties in its exclusive statutory mandate under Law n°25.19 and Article 60 of Law n°2.00. Read on its own terms, that is a description of the ordinary copyright term: rights run, heirs collect, and at seventy years the work exits protection. Nothing in the document this desk read claims an entitlement to keep collecting after that point.
Eight months later, Law n°13.26 creates exactly that entitlement, at least over “folklore” and works whose protection “has expired,” which is the public domain by definition. The two primary accounts this desk could verify do not contradict each other in the sense of one making a claim the other denies; rather, the law appears to be new statutory ground where none previously existed, built after the office had already been pressed publicly to explain, in plain terms, where its authority to collect actually ends.
What the record does not establish
Several things remain genuinely unresolved from what this desk could independently fetch and read. The amount of the new charge, who pays it, and how it will be assessed are not stated in either document; a third report surfaced in open search results, attributed to a different outlet and describing a specific numbered provision and a flat fee earmarked for supporting cultural industries, could not be fetched directly by this desk despite repeated attempts, including with a standard browser identification string, and none of its specific claims are relied on in this record. Whether the new provision reaches works already sitting in the public domain before the law’s effective date, or only those entering it afterward, is not addressed in either document this desk verified. And the relationship between the name “BMDA,” used in this directory’s own company record, and “BMDAV,” used throughout the government’s and other 2025-2026 communications, is treated here as the same legal body, consistent with how both primary documents this desk read use “BMDAV” for the office this directory lists as BMDA, though no single source read formally confirms a renaming.
What this means for artists
For working Moroccan musicians, this provision has almost nothing to do with their own active copyrights, which were never in question. It is about what happens to the folk melodies, inherited compositions and decades-old recordings that commercial users, cafes, festivals, tourism operators, broadcasters, had previously been free to treat as unencumbered once the ordinary term lapsed. If a venue, a sampling producer or a streaming platform wants to commercially exploit a public-domain Moroccan composition or a piece classified as folklore, this law gives BMDA a textual basis to require authorization and collect a fee for that use, money that, on the government’s own framing, is meant to flow back into supporting cultural industries generally rather than to the long-dead original author’s estate. Artists working with traditional or inherited material, a common practice in Moroccan popular music, should expect BMDA to start treating that material as licensable rather than free, even though the actual fee schedule has not yet been made public in any source this desk could verify. Rights holders with catalogues approaching their seventy-year cutoff gain nothing directly; the money raised under this provision is structured, as far as the record shows, as a public levy rather than a private royalty paid to anyone in particular.
This record would be revisited if BMDA or the government publishes the implementing fee schedule, if a court tests whether the provision can reach works already in the public domain before August 2026, or if a primary account of the specific numbered article and fee mechanism becomes directly readable by this desk.
