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.
Mulonga.net is a platform for a very special kind of sustaining and furthering cultural diversity and cultural exchange between the area of the Tonga people of Zimbabwe and across the Zambezi River in Zambia, Austria and the world.
The Tonga.Online Project, that has been launched in 2001, has focused attention on promoting a Tonga voice over the Internet. The aim is to provide the Tonga with access to the most advanced communication tools, so that they may represent themselves to the outside world and reflect upon the social, political and economic environment in which they live.
“Although, in recent years, attention for the necessity of intellectual property rights has grown enormously against the backdrop of globalisation and digitisation, until now no consensus has been found in the music sector,” Peter Rantasa, chairman of the panel discussion “Intellectual Property Rights” at the 2nd World Forum on Music in Beijing that will be held Friday, director of mica - music austria, and founder of the initiative fair music, states.
Rantasa says, it is no coincidence that the topics of globalisation and digitisation appear simultaneously and he also gives the reasons for the current situation: “Rich countries, artists and industries logically defend their positions. Openness for a new and innovative approach which meets the requirements of a model orientated towards a balance of interests is to be found among those who have been refused access to global markets.”
Mp3 is just a technology, a method to compress audio. But for some it is devil’s advocate because it actually made the quick and easy sharing of music over the internet possible. But one could as well “think of an mp3 as metadata about the artist”, was Joi Ito, chairman of the board of Creative Commons and member of the board of ICANN, considering at the fair music discussion in Linz in September.
“The internet is about creating relationships between the artist and the user. The problem with labels is: this brand is standing between you and the artist. We know from experience that people actually pay more if it’s going directly to the artist.”, says Ito. For artists it is therefore necessary to experiment and one possibility to find new ways of dealing with their own intellectual property is the alternative licensing scheme Creative Commons. Ito: “We think it is important to let the artist decide under which circumstances they want to give away their work and when they want to be paid.”
“Never in history music has been able to get so far, geographically, as now.”, says Ronaldo Lemos, law professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas law school in Rio de Janeiro, head of Creative Commons Brazil and chairman of iCommons, at a fair music discussion at Ars Electronica in Linz in September. By this Lemos means that the internet and digital technologies enabled the spread of music globally in a simple, cheap and fast way. This technological change leads to societal changes according to art and culture.
To give an example Ronaldo Lemos describes the scene of Tecno Brega in Brazil. Tecno Brega is a mix between an 80s beat with very romantic music, which is great for dancing together and therefore extremely popular in Brazil, especially in the north. The Tecno Brega scene releases around 400 new CDs every year and the so called Sound System Parties are crowded every weekend. Sony BMG, the largest music label in Brazil, in 2006 only released 13 CDs of brazilian music, Ronaldo Lemos remarks.
At the panel discussion “fair music – it`s time for a change” that had been held on 20th September at net.culture.space in the Wiener Museumsquartier in Vienna (Austria), the brazilian musician Celia Mara, who lives in Austria, talked about her difficulties in getting into the music biz in Brazil and in Austria. In Brazil, if you want to get on the radio, you have to pay something like a bribe. In Austria it is difficult for her to get into mainstream media as her music does not fit into any typical music category.
How the music “industry” beyond the nationwide-radio-record-label-business in Brazil works and how musicians can make their own deals is now described in detail in an article on the iCommons website. Paula Martini from Rio de Janeiro there describes the success story of the most popular band, Calypso, that has no contract with a label but ows her success to street credibility. Martini writes: “Their albums are sold primarily through street vendors, who sell CDs and DVDs of the band in the streets, not because they are pirated, but because that is the preference of the group itself. This is the result of a recent research published by F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the largest advertising agencies in the country.”
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.
