New rights for performers and producers:

The World Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Organization’s Sum­mit — Take 2

After 12 years of waiting, the Diplo­matic Con­fer­ence on the pro­tec­tion of audio­vi­sual per­for­mances will meet at last in Bei­jing from June 20^th to 26^th 2012. Based on the arti­cles pro­vi­sion­ally approved in 2000 (19 items out of 20), Mem­ber States will have to con­firm the new arti­cle on the trans­fer of rights,  agree on three addi­tional  joint state­ments and  final­ize the admin­is­tra­tive arrange­ments of the new treaty.

“The stum­bling block to agree­ment in both 1996 and 2000 was a stand-off between the USA and the Euro­pean Union over the trans­fer of rights. In audio­vi­sual pro­duc­tions the trans­fer of rights from per­form­ers to pro­duc­ers is essen­tial so that pro­duc­ers can nego­ti­ate com­mer­cial deals with cin­ema chains, broad­cast­ers, DVD retail­ers and so on with­out hav­ing to seek autho­riza­tion from each indi­vid­ual per­former.”[1]

The need to trans­fer rights is not dis­puted, but dif­fer­ent coun­tries have dif­fer­ent sys­tems for doing this.  And it is pre­cisely the arti­cle on copy­right trans­fer that was hob­bling the pro­posed audio­vi­sual treaty in 2000.

For some of our mem­bers, this Treaty is of a par­tic­u­lar importance.

Ray­mond Legault, the pres­i­dent of Union des artistes, hopes that the diplo­matic con­fer­ence will be suc­cess­ful. The 1996 Per­for­mances and Phono­grams Treaty exists, but it “cre­ates a dis­par­ity between the dif­fer­ent per­form­ers depend­ing on the pieces in which they participate. In addition, one artist may be pro­tected when par­tic­i­pat­ing in an audio record­ing but be devoid of pro­tec­tion where the pro­vi­sion is incor­po­rated in an audio­vi­sual production. Let’s agree that such a situation is unfair.”

Will this Treaty change any­thing in your nego­ti­a­tions between per­form­ers and producers?

“It will be pos­si­ble for  UDA to invoke the” moral “author­ity that comes from such a treaty to sup­port its claims, but let’s be clear, as long as the Copy­right Bill remains unchanged it does not incor­po­rate the pro­tec­tions offered by the new treaty. The impact on nego­ti­a­tions in the audio­vi­sual sec­tor is there­fore negligible. Furthermore, the amend­ments to the Copy­right Act  pro­posed by Bill C-11 does not extend the pro­tec­tion  to per­form­ers tak­ing part in audio­vi­sual works and as the next revi­sion of the Act will only ‘occur in a few years, the ben­e­fits of such a treaty will not be real­ized until much later. ”

The debate will con­tinue for years to come in the con­text of yet another Copy­right Act reform!