As we all know, performers, as conveyors of literary and art works, make their contribution by adding an artistic appeal and audio-visual appreciation to literary and art works with their brilliant and creative work, which deserve legal protection in terms of copyright. The content of rights under such protection should be constantly enriched with the continuous innovation of the works, performance, transmission and technology.
In view of the practical combination between theory and social reality, the system of harmonious copyright and related rights shall seek a balance between the copyright and related rights of owners, and maintain relationship among authors, work disseminators and the public. It is a well known fact that the protection of performers will not only stimulate their creativity and initiative, but also contribute to the spread of literary and art works, so as to meet the spiritual needs and material wealth of human beings. Accordingly, we should treat performers’ rights from a long term point of view and with a rational psychology, balance and coordinate any conflicting factors, enabling the mechanism its due role in facilitating the development of culture, safeguard legal rights of owners, realizing social fairness.
The new Intellectual Property Act was introduced by the government in 2003, namely, Act No. 36 of 2003 which is the prevailing Act. Provisions for Neighbouring Rights (Rights of presenters, singers, dancers and broadcasters or organizations etc.) were included for the first time in this Act.
Accordingly, a performer shall have the exclusive right to perform, broadcast, or communicate to the public. The rights and under the above Act shall be protected from the moment the performance takes place until the end of the fiftieth calendar year, following the year of performance.
The foregoing provisions indicate that our country has got fairly complete legal regulations on the protection of performers’ rights. In recent years, the internet industry has undergone rapid growth. The swift development enables the high and new technologies represented by digitalization and networking to permeate into all fields of social life, so that the internet produces extensive and far reaching influence on people’s working, learning and living styles, and has become a key channel to acquire knowledge, exchange ideas, study, entertain and conduct commercial transaction. It plays an increasingly important role in the social and economic development of the country.
However, the internet does not feature any borders, is a great capacity for information, rapid transmission, easy reproduction, advanced technology and good concealment, which also brings about many problems to the protection of copyright and performers’ rights.
Quite a few websites, without any authorization, illegally reproduce, upload and communicate performances; so that network infringement and pirating activities tend to be rampant, which not only impedes the creative initiatives of performers but severely impairs their legal rights and interests. There may be two main reasons for such a situation. First, the public have little understanding and awareness of the legal system on copyright protection.
People may understand the harm of infringement and pirating to the works and the authors’ rights, but have no idea about performance and performers’ rights. They have lost sight of the fact that a large quantity of works they enjoy, mainly audio-visual products are presented through the creative work of the performers. There would be no complete music, play, film or TV programs without performers. In other words, legal rights of performers have not been widely recognized or understood by society and the public. Secondly, people have not treated the issues of protection of performers’ rights in the network environment from a long-term point of view or in a rational manner. Although many people may consider it wrong to infringe upon copyrights or pirate works in the network environment, they, however, make use of the works since it is both convenient and free of charge to download movies and music. In this context, they show more sympathy to the network providers who, under the slogan of ‘Serving the Public’, illegally upload and transmit the contents, infringing upon performers’ rights, and turn a deaf ear to performers whose legal rights and interests are severely infringed upon.
Protecting legal rights of the copyright and related rights owners, combating infringement and pirating, and facilitating a sound and rapid development of the economy, culture and science have become the basic need of the whole society.
The protection of performers’ rights in the digital network environment should start with the improvement of the legal system, effective implementation of laws and public education.