E sccr/21/2 Original: English date: August , 2010 Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights Twenty First Session Geneva, November to 12, 2010

Production Firms

39 Most firms involved in media production are small- and mid-sized enterprises, but the media industries in which they participate, especially audiovisual media, are dominated by a few large firms because of the capital and operational requirements for national and international operations.

40 Production firms involved in broadcasting and cablecasting share common interests in that they create content, make rights available for sale and licensing, and want to protect their investments in the programming or the licenses to broadcast activities (sporting events, performances, etc.) that they organize.

41 This category of stakeholders generally consists of individuals or corporate business enterprises that have assembled personnel and resources for creative output purposes, and thereby invested in content creation with the aim of generating a return. Their business model depends on the protection of copyright and the predictability of a system of production over many years.

42 These institutions and individuals lean towards a commercialized model of copyright, wherein rights are bought and sold within transactions that set the terms of the exchange, preferably in their favor. They generally have an interest in the longevity of copyright and in ensuring that they receive fair shares of economic benefits from any subsequent uses of their productions.

43 These business-based stakeholders in content generation have an interest in ensuring protection of signals in order to prevent uses outside the terms that they have struck with broadcasters and cablecasters. They recognize that protection of signals also protects some content rights which they have not sold to the broadcaster or cablecaster, and they are concerned that such protection should not provide overriding rights to broadcasters and cablecasters, i.e., rights that supersede their own content rights.

44 Amongst the organizations representing these stakeholders are book, magazine, and newspaper publishers associations, music publishers associations, authors and composers societies, television producers associations, and motion picture production associations.