The draft law on copyright was made without consulting filmmakers, it does not even mention AI and does not rely on the latest EU directives but on those from earlier years
Public discussion on the Draft Law on copyright and related rights it started on March 16 and will last until April 6.
This law regulates the rights of authors of literary, scientific, professional and artistic works, the rights of interpreters, producers of phonograms, audiovisual works, broadcasts, as well as the rights of publishers of printed editions and the first publisher of free works as rights related to copyright.
And where are the filmmakers?
The reason for the adoption of the new law was the need to harmonize the domestic regulation with the EU regulations, namely with EU Directive 2012/28 on certain permitted uses of copyrighted works whose author is unknown and EU Directive 2014/26 on the collective exercise of copyright and related rights and the assignment of internet rights to musical works for multiple national territories in the internal market.
The implementation of those two directives requires a large number of new normative solutions and interventions in more than half of the articles of the current law, so as stated in the explanation, it was decided to approach the drafting of the new Law on copyright and related rights.
However, it turned out that the Draft Law was unfavorable for filmmakers, plus, they were not even involved in its creation.
The proposer of this law is the Ministry of Economy of Serbia (MPS). In addition to their representative, representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Institute for Intellectual Property, the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia, the National Library of Serbia, the Organization of Music Authors of Serbia (SOKOJ), the Organization of Phonogram Producers of Serbia (OFPS), the Organization for the Collective Exercise of Interpreters' Rights (PI) and the Digital Serbia Initiative participated in the work on the preparation of the Draft Law.
None of the filmmakers were invited. They consider it unacceptable.
Outdated EU rules
Their main objections to the Draft are that the new Law relies on European Union directives from 2012 and 2014, although the EU adopted new rules in 2019. This means that Serbian authors would continue to create and work according to fourteen-year-old rules, while their European colleagues enjoy a wider scope of protection and use mechanisms that are not available to our authors.
If the Law remains on the old EU directives, among other things, our authors would not be able to exercise the right to fair compensation. Fair compensation exists in copyright laws throughout Europe, it is one of the basic ways to protect the work of film authors, and it usually refers to receiving royalties for the rebroadcast of film works. Unfavorable contracts are also important, in which authors cede all property rights to producers, and they receive a one-time payment.
Fair compensation is also used for the social program, for the existence of authors who happen to not make a film for five or more years, to help authors who are in financial problems, retired colleagues who can no longer work...
UFUS AFA protection takes care of over five hundred members, has data on every broadcast film, with a listing, and transparently pays royalties to every member. And yet, they were not invited to the working group that wrote the Draft.
Without AI
It is also interesting that in the Serbian Draft Law on copyright and related rights there is not even a word about artificial intelligence. The filmmakers say that this is expected, because this draft is almost identical to the one from 2023, when AI was not as current and present as it is today.
The filmmakers are looking for an equal position of our authors in relation to their colleagues from Europe, as well as a law that will recognize the real challenges of contemporary creativity. And above all, they want to be included in the work of the law on which their existence depends.
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