Research On Rules Of Ownership And Exercise Of Performers’ Rights

With the development of entertainment industry, people pay more attention to the performers in the social life and international treaty on performers’ rights have developed. BTAP adopted by the Diplomatic Conference on the Protection of Audiovisual Performances in Beijing on June 24, 2012 confer rights in the audiovisual performances to performers.The protection of performance-for-hire is also an important question besides audiovisual performances. For the reasons above, during the period of the third amendment of Chinese Copyright Law, the drafter tried to introduce new clauses to address the protection of audiovisual performance and performance-for-hire.This article sorts the protection of audiovisual performance and performance-for-hire as the protection of performance under contract, tries to discuss the influence of the relationship between the performers and their employers or other investors on the protection of performers’ rights, and finally concludes that the performers should be the first owners of the rights.In the first part of this Article, the writer will summarize and analyze the questions in the protection of performances-for-hire and audiovisual performances.In the second part of this Article, the writer will analyze the influnence of contract status of performers on performers’ ownership of rights. Performers’ investors have always been trying their best to restrict performers’ rights in their performances, especially lobbying in the development of international treaties. Otherwise performers should be the first owners of their right for that they can have more advantages when they conctract with investors. The writer will also discuss the ownership theory of performers’ rights. Performance as a kind of resources is available and scare and contains performer’s creation. The owner of intellectual property rights has control over the subject matter of the rights, so as the performers’ rights.In the third part of this Article, the writer will analyze related terms drafted during the period of the third amendment of Chinese Copyright Law and provide effective proposals to address the questions in the protection of performances-for-hire and audiovisual performances.