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 Professional associations representing the European content industry give their views |
 WIPO is an international, intergovernmental organisation, with 175 Member States. Under our constitution, we are responsible for the promotion and protection of intellectual property world-wide. As a specialised agency of the United Nations, WIPO is given jurisdiction for intellectual property matters within the UN family of organisations. Two of our main activities are the management of global protection systems for patents, trade marks and industrial design and the development of norms or rules for international law in the field of intellectual property.
The Internet is a medium that knows no borders, so that transactions and activities on it typically have implications in a number of different jurisdictions. Even when you have determined what law is applicable to the transaction or activity, there is a possibility of divergence in the substance of national laws. We are interested in having convergence of the treatment of intellectual property in global markets and on global media.
As we come to a situation where the centre of wealth generation is increasingly intellectual content, intellectual property systems are of central strategic and economic importance. It is essential that we find a means to continue to return value to creators of new content. EC initiatives such as MMRCS are important elements in the construction of an overall solution to the effective protection of intellectual property in the context of digital technology. Projects like INDECS have made a very significant contribution to establishing the framework necessary to allow intellectual property to be safely exploited and traded on the internet.
Francis Gurry, Assistant Director-General and Legal Counsel,
World Intellectual Property Organisation
 Copyright industries are the fastest growing sector of the economy, but unauthorised use of copyrighted works is common in print and even more widespread in the digital area. I am concerned about this both as Chairman of IFRRO and CEO of CEDAR, the multimedia rights centre in the Netherlands, whose members are the collecting societies representing practically all of the country's journalists, writers, musicians and photographers.
Apart from their individual successes, the MMRCS projects taken together have provided a stimulus for organisations to think about the problems, talk together and co-operate to create workable solutions. I attach great value to these European projects. What is missing at present is a layer pulling everything together, but the work continues. For example, INDECS has created the INDECS framework, while VERDI is also undergoing substantial further development. The EC's forthcoming eContent Programme is an appropriate evolution for these initiatives - pursuing the development of pragmatic solutions to the problems we face.
Andre Beemsterboer, Chairman,
The International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO)
 CEPIC, the premier EU Economic Interest Group of 900 plus news and stock visual content providers, has benefited greatly from the work done under the aegis of the INFO 2000 programme. The opportunities for intellectual property rights in the digital era have been highlighted for creatives, their trade associations and at WIPO.
But these opportunities bring problems in trans - border trading when copyright works are accessed throughout the world without loss of quality and at blinding speed. Must the market be harmonised? How is the picture to be sourced and attributed, watermarked, key worded in many languages and all with a robust and enduring method of digital object identification?
Will globalisation lead to standardisation, diminishing diversity and hence diminishing quality? On the world market the European visual industry is characterized by its regional diversity and richness. We want to keep these and at the same time meet the challenges. Thus we welcome the EU eContent programme which addresses the issues. We welcome the way in which these projects require companies from different countries to cooperate on the same project.
We are particularly encouraged that the new eContent programme aims to enhance content production in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural environment and increase dynamism in the digital content market whilst addressing the issues for the protection of the European visual cultural heritage.
AM Smith, President of CEPIC,
Co-ordination of European Picture Agencies Press & Stock
Against a background of rapidly advancing technology and doubts over certain traditional rights management schemas, the INFO 2000 programme has enabled interested parties to pull together the threads of ideas and give them momentum within a well defined framework. The prototypes and feasibility studies financed by INFO 2000 have demonstrated that solutions can be put into place to harmonise practices between historically different markets.
At this point, the idea is to concentrate resources on a smaller number of projects, with the aims of:
- consolidating the results already obtained, by making them workable among potentially larger groups of organisations than those set up within the INFO 2000 framework. This might lead to the setting up of projects with countries outside the EU;
- creating links, which would permit optimum use of the results already obtained within the structure of projects set in motion by the various interested parties. This might be achieved via the creation of a platform allowing access to information on the content of all the databases, as regards authors' rights as well as neighbouring rights. Integration of certain databases might require further study.
Martine Rezzi, Legal Advisor,
The European Group of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC)
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Last updated on 28-03-01 | |
