APPENDIX 7
Memorandum submitted by Creators' Rights
Alliance
OFCOM
Frequently government appears to be only interested
in citizens as consumers. Creators are also citizens and in order
to promote high quality diverse services, the relationship between
there communication entity (broadcaster, website, ISP, or publisher)
and the creator needs some form of mechanism to enable dialogue
between the two parties. OFCOM needs a role in preventing the
continuous erosion of the rights of the creative community. This
must include not only economic rights of the creator but also
a realistic framework for creators moral rights.
PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTING
The BBC is the keystone of current Public Service
Broadcasting and the whilst and the needs of the consumer and
citizen should be central to Public Service Broadcasting policy,
the needs and rights of the creator need to be factored a into
this equation. It is wholly untenable that a publicly funded organisation
should ever behave in a fashion that can systematically undermine
the value of its contributors. Whilst it is to be expected that
the BBC should make every effort to augment its income outside
the licence fee by the secondary exploitation of its products,
it is wholly unacceptable that a significant element of this income
should come from the pockets of contributors of content to BBC
programming who are forced to sign all or a proportion of their
rights away in order to work for the BBC at all. This argument
also hold true for the commercial sector of the broadcast industry
who flourish through a their licences to broadcast to the UK public
and who also seek to raise their revenues not purely through the
successful economic exploitation of their wares, but also by forcing
contributors to have to pay what is virtually a back hander in
order to work at all.
CROSS-MEDIA
OWNERSHIP
Whilst we recognise that it can be important
for a company to achieve an adequate size in today's communications
environment, we are deeply concerned that adequate regulatory
powers should be in place to safeguard both the quality and a
diversity of the services to be provided.
We are also certain that alliances between large
media companies create unfair pressures which end up bearing down
on their individual contributor who can be forced into an unfair
contracting process because of an agreement with a third party.
A particularly good example of this is where both of the BBC and
at the ITV companies have deals with large multinational music
publishers which force composers not only to have to sign away
a proportion of their rights but moreover to do so on the basis
of singularly unadvantageous contracts which are created by the
large multinationals for their own benefit and which do not fit
into any norm of a fair contract in any other sector of the music
industry.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
RIGHTS
Intellectual property rights are not solely
an economic resource, but also a mainstay in protecting individual
rights and freedoms. The current relationship between creators
and the communications industries has grown organically over the
last half of the 20th century. Recently however these relationships
have been put under increasing duress as moves have been made
to undermine and remove the rights of the creative community in
order for the broadcaster or publisher to have unfettered control
of any work they commission. There are serious implications for
the UK if this trend is allowed to gather pace. Firstly there
is a danger of the disappearance of a thriving freelance pool
of contributors of excellence as their economic well-being is
undermined by being paid lower and lower fees and also having
no royalty or residual income as companies attempt to seize all
rights in their contracting processes. This will inevitably lead
to a point where the UK is no longer known as a producer of quality
in the television field and where increasingly broadcasting will
be dominated by non UK produced programming which will be both
damaging to the UK economy and also lead to reduction in quality
and diversity for the UK consumer.
Equally it is important that "moral rights"
are bolstered to protect this quality and diversity so that creators
works are not altered or repackaged in endless differing formats
where the creator has lost the right to prevent their brainchild
being used in a way that was never intended in the first place.
6 December 2001
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