CISAC President Jean-Michel Jarre Addresses WIPO Conference on Global Digital Content Market

In Geneva, Switzerland, CISAC President Jean-Michel Jarre renewed the urgent call to protect the right to fair remuneration of creators in the digital market. Introducing the “Digital Architecture – The Soft Infrastructure of the Global Market” panel, Jean-Michel Jarre called upon delegates, country ambassadors, and creative industry leaders at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Conference on the Global Digital Content Market to strongly support and adapt the international legal framework of intellectual property to “this new environment where distribution is global and knows no borders.”

Jean-Michel Jarre declared,

There will be no content market in the future if creators are unable to create new contents. Creative content is about people behind films, TV programmes, books, music, paintings,…If we want more online content, if we want creativity and high quality works to flourish and be renewed in the digital age, you need to protect the people who create this content. Protecting those means to protect their right to get a fair remuneration for their work.

Referring to the impact of digital markets on remuneration, Jarre cautioned that “one thousand streams will bring less than 1€ to the creator-0.8 cents exactly”, thus necessitating strong copyright laws to redress the situation currently threatening the system of remuneration that supports creators. CISAC’s data evidences this: the latest Global Collections Report noted that despite a 20% growth in royalties collected from digital services, digital income for creatorsstill only represents 6.5% of total royalties collected worldwide.

CISAC President’s address introduced a panel exploring the key role of collective management organisations in maintaining the economic value chain. The panel included Composers & Authors Society of Hong Kong (CASH) CEO Elton Yeung, Angela Mills Wade of European Publishers Council (EPC), Dominic Young and Richard Hooper of The Copyright Hub, and Tracey Armstrong of Copyright Clearance Centre.

In regards to this momentous event, Mr Yeung stated,

To protect creators, we must turn platforms into legitimate digital service providers, which offer consumers legal access to digital content as well as provide fair remuneration to creators. To achieve this, we need to streamline our licensing activities to help DSPs acquire the necessary rights to conduct their business.