(a) General. This section prescribes the rules under which the mechanical licensing collective will provide certain information in its annual report pursuant to 17 U.S.C. 115(d)(3)(D)(vii), and a one-time written update regarding the collective's operations in 2021.

(b) Contents. Each of the mechanical licensing collective's annual reports shall contain, at a minimum, the following information:

(1) The operational and licensing practices of the mechanical licensing collective;

(2) How the mechanical licensing collective collects and distributes royalties, including the average processing and distribution times for distributing royalties for the preceding calendar year. The mechanical licensing collective shall disclose how it calculated processing and distribution times for distributing royalties for the preceding calendar year;

(3) Budgeting and expenditures for the mechanical licensing collective;

(4) The mechanical licensing collective's total costs for the preceding calendar year;

(5) The projected annual mechanical licensing collective budget;

(6) Aggregated royalty receipts and payments;

(7) Expenses that are more than 10 percent of the annual mechanical licensing collective budget;

(8) The efforts of the mechanical licensing collective to locate and identify copyright owners of unmatched musical works (and shares of works);

(9) The mechanical licensing collective's selection of board members and criteria used in selecting any new board members during the preceding calendar year;

(10) The mechanical licensing collective's selection of new vendors during the preceding calendar year, including the criteria used in deciding to select such vendors, and key findings from any performance reviews of the mechanical licensing collective's current vendors. Such description shall include a general description of any new request for information (RFI) and/or request for proposals (RFP) process, either copies of the relevant RFI and/or RFP or a list of the functional requirements covered in the RFI or RFP, the names of the parties responding to the RFI and/or RFP. In connection with the disclosure described in this paragraph (b)(10), the mechanical licensing collective shall not be required to disclose any confidential or sensitive business information. For the purposes of this paragraph (b)(10), “vendor” means any vendor performing materially significant technology or operational services related to the mechanical licensing collective's matching and royalty accounting activities;

(11) Whether during the preceding calendar year the mechanical licensing collective, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. 115(d)(7)(C), applied any unclaimed accrued royalties on an interim basis to defray costs in the event that the administrative assessment is inadequate to cover collective total costs, including the amount of unclaimed accrued royalties applied and plans for future reimbursement of such royalties from future collection of the assessment; and

(12) Whether during the preceding calendar year the mechanical licensing collective suspended access to the public database to any individual or entity attempting to bypass the collective's right to charge a fee to recover its marginal costs for bulk access outlined in 17 U.S.C. 115(d)(3)(E)(v)(V) through repeated queries, or to otherwise be engaging in unlawful activity with respect to the database (including, without limitation, seeking to hack or unlawfully access confidential, non-public information contained in the database) or misappropriating or using information from the database for improper purposes. If the mechanical licensing collective so suspended access to the public database to any individual or entity, the annual report must identify such individual(s) and entity(ies) and provide the reason(s) for suspension.

(c) December 31, 2021 Update. No later than December 31, 2021, the mechanical licensing collective shall post, and make available online for a period of not less than three years, a one-time written report that contains, at a minimum, the categories of information required in paragraph (b) of this section, addressing activities following the license availability date. If it is not practicable for the mechanical licensing collective to provide information in this one-time report regarding a certain category of information required under paragraph (b) of this section, the MLC may so state but shall explain the reason(s) for such impracticability and, as appropriate, may address such categories in an abbreviated fashion.