FIA Publications - Details
Your performance, your rights: A new flyer and website to raise awareness about the Beijing Treaty among performers
In 2012, the member States of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) met at a Diplomatic Conference in Beijing to finalise a new international treaty aiming to extend intellectual property protection to audiovisual performers around the world. The Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances was an outstanding achievement and the result of more than 20 years of determined advocacy work, led by FIA and many other international performer organisations.
The treaty grants performers economic rights to improve their livelihoods and derive an acceptable income from the use of their work, and also awards them moral rights to protect their image and reputation. These entitlements had long been acknowledged to audio performers by the international community. However, actors and other performers in the audiovisual industry were deliberately left aside – something that FIA never ceased to decry as a terrible injustice and that became, with time, a very harmful anachronism as many national laws rarely went beyond the minimum international standards and extended full IP protection to all performers. The WIPO member States may now become parties to the Treaty, which shall become binding as a minimum threshold of 30 ratifications is reached. Of course, many more should follow if the Treaty is to become a true global norm. Audiovisual performers and their representative organisations must therefore campaign for countries to embrace the provisions in the Treaty and make sure their national laws are in compliance with this new standard.
In order to raise awareness about the Beijing Treaty among performers, FIA has created a simple A4 recto verso flyer to explain, in a nutshell, why the treaty matters to audiovisual performers, as it carries the recognition of that their work deserves intellectual property protection, just like audio performances. This communication tool is part of the larger Beijing Treaty campaign initiated by FIA including a website entirely dedicated to the BTAP: www.beijingtreaty.com
