CISAC’s General Assembly to meet in Lisbon to discuss future of Creative Sector

Lisbon, 6 June 2017 – The pre-eminent global gathering of creators and authors’ society heads will convene in Lisbon this week for the 2017 CISAC General Assembly.

CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, is the world’s leading network of authors’ societies and the collective voice of over 4 million creators worldwide.

More than 200 leading creators and society heads will participate as the confederation renews its call on governments internationally to legislate for fair remuneration for music authors, screenwriters, directors and visual artists.

Top of CISAC’s priorities is the global campaign for legislation to address music’s ‘transfer of value’. This is a market distortion that allows some of the world’s major digital services build large businesses on the back of creators, while paying very little in return.

CISAC President Jean-Michel Jarre says: “Globalisation has seen an increasing concentration of tech giants with immense power to get creative content on the cheap. CISAC looks to governments to get this right: to channel fair value for creative works to the creators who made them, and not the digital platforms that exploit legal loopholes to make money from them”.

CISAC Director General Gadi Oron adds: “Societies must have a fair market environment in which to license their repertoire. But the picture today is far from fair. A number of digital platforms, which dominate content distribution, are using out-dated laws or legal loopholes to avoid royalty payments and amass huge revenues on the backs of creators. This anomalous situation must be fixed”.

The President of Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores, José Jorge Letria says: "Lisbon will be for a few days the copyright capital of the world, welcoming many dozens of authors' societies from all over the world. Our message is clear: without authors there is no culture. And we look to legislators to guarantee creators fair remuneration for their work and recognition of their struggle to create a more supportive, more human and luminous world. Together we will achieve it, since reason, emotion and creativity are on our side”. 

Remuneration successes in audiovisual and visual arts sector

The last year has seen a number of key successes in the creators’ global campaign for fair remuneration. CISAC works alongside its Creators’ Councils, the Council of Music Authors (CIAM), Writers & Directors Worldwide (W&DW) and the International Council of Creators of Graphic, Plastic and Photographic Arts (CIAGP).

Thanks to campaigns driven by societies in Latin America, new laws giving screenwriters and directors the right to earn royalties have been adopted in Chile and Colombia. The reforms introduce a remuneration right, meaning that audiovisual creators will be able to earn a living from their work for the first time.

There has also been key progress in CISAC’s campaign for an international resale right for visual artists. The resale right allows artists to share in the proceeds when their works are resold by galleries and auction houses. Momentum for international adoption of the right is picking up following the first ever full-day conference dedicated to the issue at WIPO in April 2017, marked by overwhelming support from artists across the world.

CISAC’s 2017 Annual Report, providing a comprehensive overview of its fight for creators’ rights globally, will be available for download at www.cisac.org on 8 June 2017.