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In the first quarter of 2020 happened two major events that changed the global film industry: the pandemic and the entry into force of the long-awaited Beijing Treaty on audiovisual works. The agreement, signed in far 2012, was finally ratified by the necessary number of countries and handy. During the pandemic, the Russian film industry has lost more than a third of revenues, and about 30 percent of cinemas around the world and will not be able to recover from the crisis. Quite different is the situation in the field of care.

According to estimates of the American online Kill the Cable Bill, the period of isolation of the users of the largest platform Netflix looked at the billions of hours and millions of terabytes of content. Moreover, the service was joined by 16 million people – thus, for the three months quarantine real growth exceeded the forecasts two times.

These numbers prove once again that content is rapidly migrating to online, and the film industry need to adapt to these realities. Against this background, exacerbated the problem of equitable remuneration to the actors. To solve it was called the Beijing Treaty on audiovisual performances, allowing the actors and other performers to obtain not only the fee for the participation in the shooting, but charges for the use of their content on television or the Internet.

On last June 16, the first installment of a series of Creative Global Talks on the theme of “Beijing Treaty: from Rome to Beijing” dedicated to the effect of the entry into force of the Beijing Treaty on global film market, the experts expressed the opinion that to improve the situation of the acting community in Russia will be able to establish a strong Union representing their interests. The more that such examples already exist, including the Spanish AISGE.

“In our country are actively working producer and author community, but no associations of actors who could defend their rights, as it does, for example, Russian authors’ society, – said the Deputy Director of the legal Department of the Ministry of culture of the Russian Federation Alexey Kubyshkin. – Such companies are, for example, in Spain. They collect royalties for the use of the actor’s performances in movies, including and with content aggregators such as Netflix. I hope that in our country there will be the collecting society for actors”.

the Agreement between Netflix and AISGE, apparently, will become a precedent, and similar developments can be expected in other platforms: HBO, Disney+, Movistar+ and Amazon Prime. A possible approach is due to the peculiarities of national legislation on intellectual property of Spain according to which actors recognize the right to receive equitable remuneration for the use created with the participation of conawning in the country.

the Agreement covers all movies, series and other audiovisual works provided by Netflix in Spain. Remuneration is calculated based on the income received by the company within the Kingdom, regardless of the success of the project in other countries. Responsible for the collection and payment of such royalty is borne by the organizations related to AISGE. Regular payments to actors will start from July 20, the actors of dubbing – from 20 September. Given the high popularity of Spanish content, for example, “Paper the house”, which became the most popular series in the world with over 65 million hits (breaking the record of “Game of thrones” and “walking dead”), these payments will help to partially mitigate the impact of the economic crisis for the film industry in Spain.

the Beijing Treaty will also allow the Spanish people to receive remuneration for the showing of films and videos in other countries – participants of the Treaty in national law which upheld a similar law. Russia joined the Beijing Treaty in 2015. However, at the moment part 4 of the civil code excludes actors and other performers from the list of subjects of related rights in a work.

“the film industry has a huge number of problems that affect not only fair remuneration, but also revisions and other production issues. Therefore, it is a pity that we don’t have guilds, which defended the rights of actors. Probably, this is due to the fact that we have developed has always been directing a movie in recent years – production. And the actors here are in a subordinate position, they are rarely able to dictate their terms. I think that sooner or later the trend towards the unification appears. Now there is a Guild actor’s agents, so it will happen in the nearest future”, – said the chief editor of the portal “Movie.ru” Jean Prosanov.

most Likely, the emergence of such a Union is not interested producers, said Prosanov. “In any case, it would increase the cost of production. It is an obvious fact. But in General, this situation “civilized” market: the tools of copyright should be available to the largest possible number of people. However, our film industry needs some time to come to it”, – concluded the expert.