CISAC promotes audiovisual rights at WIPO seminar prior to Shanghai Film Festival

CISAC Regional Director for Asia-Pacific has promoted CISAC’s global campaign for the inalienable remuneration right at a key forum on 19th June 2017 prior to the Shanghai Film Festival. The “International Forum on Copyright – Protecting the Rights of Creators and Promoting the Development of Culture and Film Industry” was jointly hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC), in Shanghai, China.

The forum gathered together over 150 participants including copyright officials from Algeria, Belarus, Benin, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Mongolia, Oman, Philippines, South Korea, Russia, Samoa, Senegal, Tonga, and Vanuatu, academics and various stakeholders from the world’s film industry.Sylvie Forbin, WIPO’s Deputy Director General for Copyright and Creative Industries Sector, opened the meeting, emphasising that WIPO would support a balanced approach for the protection of stakeholders in the film industry, including audiovisual producers, performers and creators.

Zhou Huilin, Vice Minister of NCAC, said the film industry is one of the most important of the copyright-based industries, and the most dynamic and popular of art forms. Globalisation of the digital environment has also seen films being disseminated worldwide with unprecedented success, enabling new industry growth. The Minister stressed the importance of copyright protection from the creation to the distribution of a film, and all the other aspects related to it. He said that strengthening copyright protection of films not only rewards the hard work of film creators, but also boosts the development of a prosperous film industry.

Benjamin Ng, CISAC Regional Director for Asia-Pacific, spoke on “remuneration rights for audiovisual creators”, highlighting CISAC’s global campaign this inalienable remuneration right, as well as the key latest international legislative developments. Colombia has become the latest country to introduce a remuneration right for audiovisual creators, allowing screenwriters and directors to receive an equitable share in the success of their work. He also pointed out that Colombia has also recently ratified the ‘Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances’, which grants a number of economic rights to audiovisual performers. Ng said the remuneration right for audiovisual creators would compliment the right granted to audiovisual performers under the treaty, and that both rights would benefit the development of the film industry. He urged representatives to consider the remuneration right for audiovisual creators as their respective countries ratify the Beijing Treaty.

In China, a new draft copyright law is currently under discussion, which would recognise directors, screenwriters and music score writers as co-authors of audiovisual works and a secondary remuneration right for audiovisual creators