Corp and Securities Law Blog

International Copyrights and the Berne Convention

The Berne Convention requires protection of international copyright. Seeks to encourage intellectual and cultural production, through a temporary monopoly and thus contribute to the public interest, ensuring that these productions happen in the end the public domain. But in practice, Story found that only a few superstars take advantage of the protection of copyright, while most in Latin America, can not live off their earnings. "There are some who write scripts for telenovelas, but even the best authors Venezuelans must have other employment. So if this system were so good for authors, how come there are only a handful?"

Story adds, moreover, that "this system, which actually helps neither musicians or artists, also gives us good quality productions. The chain produce cultural goods for sale, in the same way bottles are produced coca cola or cars. No question whether to enrich the existing knowledge, and assessing whether there is a new idea of an existing copyright. Rather, the first question is: will it sell? And indeed, for musicians Latin America, the question is: will it sell in Quito? But, will it sell in New York, London, Barcelona? Made even forcing the artists to change the way they are presented, thus losing its beauty -say-Ecuadorian music to become much more homogenized product that may actually succeed in New York.

An additional problem with the extension of copyright is that a wide range of productions that could pay big dividends in the public domain-such as publishing books has been exhausted, or valuable cultural creations that have fallen into oblivion, remain inaccessible due to the problem of finding the or an owner of rights.

Copyright Protection

In this regard, the U.S. researcher referred to a statement from an official of his government, quoted in The Copy / South Dossier: "A central goal of foreign policy in the information age is to win the battle of global information flows, dominating the airwaves, as well as Great Britain once ruled the seas." Story claims that not only want to capture new markets with higher levels of intellectual property protection, but both want to charge for it.

Mexico has the dubious world record of having the longest duration of copyright, 100 years after the author's death. Means that a song or a book produced today, whose author dies within 60 years, would have to wait until 2167, before moving into the public domain. Such a law was not adopted to protect Mexican writers (although a few could take advantage) argues Story, but "to provide protection periods getting longer imported to the U.S. production." The logic would be more protection for markets, "to strengthen their standards of protection, to imprison more pirates, so we can have more one-way flow of cultural and educational goods" is the message.