Performers Right To Study

This thesis is intended to carry out a systematic research on performer's rights. There hasn't been any kind of special book of research on performs' rights in our country according to the current data that the writer has acquired. In this sense, the research of this thesis is initiative, and also because of this, the flaw of the thesis is obvious. This thesis is intended to arouse better ideas.The special professional group of performers is deeply rooted in the social culture, and their footprints are concomitant along with the human history. In the vicissitudes of history, the performers' social status has undergone a dramatic change. The term of actor in legal concept originates from the English term of performer, to which the term of actor in modern Chinese is corresponding. In ancient China, actor was called Youling. Look through the history of Youling's coming into existence and development from the angle of art, the art created by Youling is a resplendent star in Chinese art history;and the history of Youling is the one of morality and law repulsing and oppressing them from the angle of morality and law. In western countries, performers had long been rejected from the door of the church.Cross the threshold of history, science and technology, especially the fast development of the recording, broadcasting and television techniques in the end of 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, have fundamentally changed the social and historical status of performers. On the one hand, with the development of the techniques of replication, broadcasting and so on, the entertaining industry has become one of the most important industries of different countries' economy, and the performers have gained a significant status in the whole entertaining industry. There is no denying the fact that the rise of entertaining industry has brought up the group of stars who own fancy cars and big houses and whose social status, income and ways of living are very different from the ordinary people. People like them, adore them, and enjoy the happiness and artistic conceptions brought by their unique artistic performances. Their dazzling lights are glittering in people's everyday life. On the other hand, the interest of the whole professional group of performers hasn't increased sharply. On the contrary, the development of the techniques of recording, broadcasting and so on hasfundamentally changed the simple chain-relation of performer—performance organizer—audience, or performer—audience. The age when performers have to be with the audience face to face has ended. Due to the lack of legal protection measures, most of the group of performers have been pushed to the edge of unemployment.Just in order to affirm the special contributes to the society through performers' diligent work, and to guarantee that performers continue to play the irreplaceable part of culture disseminator in the long river of history, it is necessary to give the group legal protections so as to deal with the professional crisis brought about by the development of broadcasting techniques like replication, broadcasting and so on. Performers' rights emerge as the times require.There are meanings of the performers' rights in the broad sense and narrow sense. Its meaning in the broad sense refers to all the rights a performer enjoyed as a natural person, including the rights empowered by the Constitution, the Criminal Law, the Civil Law, the Contract Law and the Neighboring Right Law. Its meaning in the narrow sense refers to all the rights enjoyed by a performer for his/her performance in the range of the Neighboring Right Law, including the moral rights and economic rights. If there is no special declaration, the performers' rights in this paper mainly refer to the second one.Performers under the protection of laws should be: natural person whose behavior is in accordance with fair practice with the objective to display his/ her acquirement and skills. Performance is the unique way for a natural person to display his/her acquirement. Therefore the performer can only be natural person which includes single natural person and the aggregation of natural person and it's impossible for a fictitious person or other organizations to be a performer. Thereby the range of law-protected performers should be: natural person including single natural person and the aggregation of natural person who displays his/her acquirement and skills through behaviors in accordance with fair practice.In terms of the rationality of the protection of performers' rights, the labor theory of Lock has a significant influence. The personality property theory established by Kant and Hegel is another tradition legal philosophy ideology designed to explain the abstract matters of intellectual property and intangible property. According to perspectives of legal economics, the creation of performers' rights is the indispensable requirement to achieve the maximum of personal interest and social interest. The Pareto Optimality test provides an effective way to evaluate and consummate the legislation of performers' rights.Performers' moral rights include the right of telling performers' identities and the right of protecting the performing image from distortion. The basic economic rights of performers include: the right to broadcast and propagate performance to the public, the right of initially fixed performance, the right of copying performance, and the right of acquiring just reward. These rights are developed on the basis of the establishment of the Roman Convention. As a result, the rights expressed in nomenclature in the 4* chapter are not restricted as exclusive rights.In response to Internet's challenge to the Copyright Law and Neighboring Right Law, the World Intellectual Property Organization drafted two new treaties on the protection of copyright and neighboring rights in 1996: World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty (WCT) and World Intellectual Property Organization Performance and Phonogram Treaty (WPPT), which established in the international law the new rules for the protection of copyright and neighboring rights in the Internet age and effectively promoted the pertinent legislation in different nations. The WPPT awarded performers three new rights: publishing right, leasing right, and the right of providing recorded performance. Since these three rights were defined by pertinent international convention as exclusive rights from their coming into being, the 5th chapter used leasing right, publishing right and Information Network Supply Right to give prominence to the meaning of exclusive right.The restriction and exceptions of performers' rights came into being based on the need to balance interests.The Contract Law and Personal Right Law are also included in the protection of performers' rights. The Contract Law is the most direct and practically most extensively applied way to protect performers' rights.Most of the tort actions instituted by performers at present in our country are based on the Personal Right Law. So the protection of performers' rights through Personal Right Law has a significant sense.Publicity right system is a very important system to American performers. Therefore, we can't neglect the publicity right system if we want to study the performers' rights by comparison and study the protection the Personal Right Law provides for public personage like performers.