Identifying the conflicts of interest
On Friday at the World Forum on Music in Beijing, artists, producers, law experts, representatives of intellectual property organisations, researchers and activists have discussed the present and the future of intellectual property rights (IPRs). The session, dedicated to this topic was chaired by Peter Rantasa, member of the exceutive board of the International Music Council (IMC), which held the Forum, and initiator of fair music.
Within the perspective of the IMCs five musical rights (in short: freedom of expression, freedom to learn, right to access, right to develop artistry and communicate, right to obtain just recognition and remuneration) the panel explored the needs for and obstacles to creating an effective IPR-regime in countries which do not have one; the situation for collective ownership and traditional music; alternatives to conventional IPR-regimes; the international quest between copyright and authors rights; collective rights management; the cutting edge issues for IPR in the digital realm and empiric data on the financial outcomes of IPR-regimes and their effects on creativity.
IPR-regimes worldwide
At the IMC conference “Many Musics” 4 years ago it has been made clear that the IMC should find a balanced position on the questions of copyright. This is quite a difficult task because the concepts and situations vary a great deal around the world. At the IPR session the turkish lawyer Burak Özgen first gave a brief overview of the various concepts of IPRs over the world and explained the difference between the US-copyright and the european authors rights regime.
Does IPR help earn a living?
Martin Kretschmer, professor of Information Jurisprudence and director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management of Bournemouth University in the UK then gave an insight into the earnings of artists and the role of copyright in this context. The evidence shows that the median earnings of authors and artists are well below national average wages, only a small number of authors and artists earn very well. These winner-take-all characteristic is even more pronounced in the music sector where the top 10% of composers and songwriters account for almost 90% of the total earnings of the profession. For musicians, earnings from IP royalties account for about 1% of creative income. The more copyright related the income stream, the more extreme is the distribution of income.
The danish artist Pia Raug added to this in her speech that she can only survive as a composer because she is performing as well. Authors rights - moral and economic – she stated, are in some respects so much weaker then the performer’s rights. “(US-) Copyright has turned into an industrial right that gives the ‘owner’ unlimited control. No wonder that these same corporate business interests wish to have the same unlimited control in the European market – and therefore spend billions of dollars lobbying the European authorities.”, Raug said.
IPRs do not benefit traditional cultures
Wend Wendland, head of Traditional Creativity, Cultural Expressions
and Cultural Heritage Section of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said in his speech, that the conventional intellectual property system had been identified by some as not only inadequate to comprehensively and appropriately protect traditional cultural expressions but also as positively harmful. First, because IP rules exclude many traditional cultural expressions from protection, consigning them to an unprotected “public domain”. Second, follow-on innovations and creations derived from them receive protection as “new” intellectual property and leaving the traditional cultures without any benefit.
Technology challenges policy
Globalisation and digitisation are two key words that name the underlying current of structural change that shapes most of the actual challenges that music life and the IMC have to face today, Peter Rantasa said. In this context the struggles about the future format of intellectual property rights and its institutions and governance have turned out to be the focus point. It is there that the conflicts of interest between the diverse stakeholders, lobbying groups and policy makers, the priorities of professional arts, culture in a wider sense and commercial interests, collide. A continuous process to harmonise the legal situation is at work on an international level. At the IPR session at the World Forum on Music in Beijing speakers introduced the efforts to enhance existing IPR-regimes to cope with the new challenges, as well as new models like global licensing, a cultural flat rate or the alternative licensing scheme Creative Commons.
