EU Wants Movie Rights Out of Treaty

GENEVA (AP) â€” The European Union on Thursday rejected U.S. attempts to include Hollywood-style movie rights in a new global treaty to protect actors. <br><br>The U.S. system involves ``transferring''

Friday, December 8th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

GENEVA (AP) â€” The European Union on Thursday rejected U.S. attempts to include Hollywood-style movie rights in a new global treaty to protect actors.

The U.S. system involves ``transferring'' actors' financial rights to the producer. Hollywood regards the producer as the ``author'' who is responsible for selling the movie and ensuring that actors, screenwriters, directors and others get their share.

``The main beneficiaries would be performers,'' said Kamal Idris, director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization â€” the U.N. agency sponsoring the talks â€” in a speech opening the negotiations.

New global standards would also make it simpler to export movies and give viewers a larger selection worldwide, he added.

Years of talks preceding the final round on performers' rights have produced a proposed treaty, but major differences remain on key points. A central one is whether the world should follow the U.S. lead on actors' rights.

Copyright lawyers say selling movies abroad would be unworkable if distributors in one country had to deal separately with all the people who made a movie in another country.

Europe has taken various approaches. In Britain and Finland, for example, performers have the rights. In France and Germany, however, the producers have the rights.

``We firmly disagree with those who claim that the key to the protocol is the rapid transfer of performers' rights to producers,'' said EU official Thierry Stoll.

Such provisions were ``designed to safeguard the interests of producers rather than performers,'' he said.

Nonetheless, Stoll said he believed agreement on the accord was within reach of the more than 90 countries meeting in Geneva.

India, which has one of the world's largest movie industries, said producers' rights must be protected in the accord because of the crucial role they play in making it possible for everyone else involved in films to have their jobs.

U.S. Deputy Commerce Secretary Q. Todd Dickinson said the legal framework had to balance the rights of all those making movies and other video works.

The U.S. delegation includes industry and actors' representatives, both supporting Washington's position.

Differences between the United States and Europe were a key reason why movies were dropped from two treaties approved in 1996 to protect authors and music performers on the Internet. Washington has ratified those accords.

The new treaty would apply to the Internet as well as to cinemas and television broadcasts.

``We need to protect both performers and producers in maintaining their rights to their works in this Internet age,'' said Linda Lourie, a member of the U.S. delegation. ``These things can be copied and distributed so easily and often in an unauthorized way.''

Bob Hadl, representing Hollywood's Screen Actors Guild, told The Associated Press the treaty should contain a feature much wanted by many actors â€” rules to prevent people from altering actors' images on the Internet.