IRIS Special

Creativity Comes at a Price
The Role of Collecting Societies

95 EUR
ISBN 978-92-871-6591-6
148 pages
Edition 2009

...Even in an ideal world with adequate rights and crystal clear rules, the combination of the mere number of persons potentially contributing to a single audiovisual work and the many different ways of exploiting each work complicate the establishment of any remuneration system. Global services pose an additional challenge to the monitoring of uses that would necessitate the payment of rightsholders not least because national copyright systems still differ significantly.

If one looks at the way in which the different national regimes define the statute of the author, wone finds a wide array of solutions. The different approaches share the principle that an author must have contributed to the creation of a work but then diverge with regard to specific requirements and how to apply them to the professional groups concerned. As a result film directors are the only group of professionals considered unanimously to be authors. Producers are authors in Great Britain as well as in Turkey for films made until the law was changed in 1995. Authors of pre-existing works such
as books adapted for a film, for example, are also authors of the resulting audiovisual works in Franceand Norway but not in Germany. Actors with a particular prominent role can be authors in Austria and Germany. Certain professionals providing technical services such as sound and light design are authors in many of the countries but not at all in Hungary or Spain. Choreographers, script and dialogue writers, editors, costume designers, make-up artists, film music composer etc. may or may not be authors depending on which law applies. A professional who made a contribution that would
generally qualify him as an author might still not be considered as such, if he acted, for example, as an employee in the Netherlands. It is then the employer who takes authorship.

Not being an author, however, does not necessarily leave the person who made a creative contribution without rights given that he might still qualify as holders of neighbouring rights. Concerning neighbouring rights, however, we also note different national approaches and in spite of the existence of Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. For example, while most countries confer upon performers the right of reproduction and communication to the public of fixations of their performances, French
and Austrian copyright law assign (unless a contract stipulates otherwise) these exploitations rights to the producer or production company if the performing artists knowingly participated in making a professionally produced film or other cinematographic work.

Nevertheless some harmonisation has been achieved thanks to certain EC Directives...

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This IRIS Special is made up of country-by country reports on the rules and practices in 12 European countries, namely :

Austria, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom

To every possible extent, the chapters follow the same structure:

1. The Legal Framework
   The provisions that form the legal basis for the attribution of rights
   (the distinction of professional groups, their respective rights, etc.)
2. The Practice in Rights Management
   Who manages these rights in practice
   (transfer of rights to third parties, fall-back clause for some rights, etc.)
3. The Institutional Framework of Collecting Societies
   General information on the various collecting societies that manage some or all of the rights
   (their legal bases, organisation, services offered, collection and distribution of royalties, etc.)
4. The Rightsholders' Perspective
   The practice of rights management for the individual rightsholders
   (their choice of collecting societies and relations with them, their financial return, control, etc.)