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Actors
look to world pact protecting their rights
Leaders
of the major international actors’ grouping said
they were confident a pact to protect global performers’
rights would emerge this month from a United Nations
conference.
They were speaking at a news briefing as diplomats at
the gathering, being held under the auspices of the
U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), were debating draft versions of the possible
text.
“We are confident that a reasonable compromise
will emerge and that we will at last have an international
instrument to protect us”, Katherine Sand, General-Secretary
of the London- based International Federation of Actors
(FIA) said.
But Sand, supported by colleagues from Canada and Denmark,
said there was opposition to aspects of the pact from
some producers and broadcasters who fear that it will
involve them in higher costs.
The conference is due to end on December 20.
The pact, on which an earlier negotiating effort failed
in 1996 at a WIPO conference which produced a treaty
on rights of audio performers like singers and musicians,
is seen as vital by film and television actors and other
performers.
They argue that the rapid advance of the digital age
and the Internet leaves them even more exposed to abuse
of what is termed their “moral rights” to
ensure that their images are not used for unapproved
advertising or even Internet pornography.
But they are also concerned to ensure that they are
paid their so-called “residual rights” when
works they appear in are broadcast or shown outside
their own countries.
They said a pact would also help performers in some
developing countries — including India, Thailand
and the Philippines — where there are strong film
industries but actors’ unions were either weak
or non-existent.
Sand of FIA, which has some 100 member organizations
in over 70 countries, told the news conference that
actors and other visual performers were the only part
of the world’s cultural industry whose rights had
no global protection.
“Painters, writers, musicians, singers are all
covered. We are still out in the cold”, she said.
Diplomats say one barrier to conclusion of a treaty
could be differences between the United States and the
European Union over whether it should include a blanket
clause under which actors would transfer their rights
to producers.
Under the present system in the United States, strong
professional bodies like the Screen Actors’ Guild
negotiate with producers to ensure that their members
are compensated whenever films or TV shows in which
they appear are broadcast.
In Europe, systems vary with actors’ rights being
transferred to producers in France and Germany while
in Britain and Finland rights remain with the performers.
Gary Neil of the Canadian ACTRA actors’ body and
Bjorn Hoberg-Peterson of Denmark said there was no basic
difference on a pact between the European actors and
their U.S. colleagues, including the Screen Actors’
Guild which belongs to FIA.
“What we are aiming at is an agreement that would
allow everyone to maintain the system they are working
under, if it suits them, and certainly not to impose
a single system on all countries signing the agreement”,
he said.
EU officials say they fear the United States is aiming
to extend its ‘Hollywood’ system abroad —
imposing it on other countries in a version of the ‘extra-territoriality’
Brussels argues Washington sometimes tries to use in
world trade.
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