Protecting performers’ rights by neighbouring rights or copyright protection has been an issue debated around the world, both between the two main legal systems and amongst countries within each legal system. The Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances sets out the rights of audiovisual performers, but leaves regulation and other details up to the member states. In national law, there are conflicts between audiovisual performers and producers, private interests and industry interests, fairness and efficiency. In the digital era, there are challenges from technology and international trade. Usually, performers transfer their exclusive rights to producers and often do not have a sufficiently strong bargaining position to obtain a meaningful remuneration. Moreover, in practice, the economic perspective for the average audiovisual performer is not optimistic. Therefore, current neighbouring rights or copyright law are not adequately protecting the needs and interests of audiovisual performers. However, the audiovisual industry will only be able to develop if creators’ works and performers’ achievements are respected and protected. Determining how protection of audiovisual performers fits into copyright law, how to guarantee that their interests are protected, and how to promote utilization and commercialization of audiovisual works and performances are worldwide issues. This project also includes a field research on the protection for audiovisual performers’ remuneration rights. (The survey includes interviews of some German CMOs and questionnaires for performers in Germany).
Meanwhile, China is conducting the third initial and comprehensive revision of its Copyright Law. This project uses China as a model for improving audiovisual performers’ rights in order to balance the interests of audiovisual performers and producers in a manner that will promote the audiovisual industry. The ultimate goal of this project is to find solutions to achieve both fairness and efficiency in audiovisual performers’ protection.