Copyright and cultural diversity

A study on a 2005 UNESCO Convention for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. [09jun10]

The conclusions of a study completed by a Geneva-based lawfirm, which summarises the state of implementation of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (ratified by the EC in 2007), was presented to the Culture and Education Committee (CULT). The study focused on fields where the EU would be expected to provide leadership. A good deal of attention is paid to the regulatory implications of digital media and the research team adopts an emphatically critical approach to the idea of enhancing copyright.

During the workshop, the head of the study, Christophe Germann, said that while some copyright is necessary, the research team had come to the conclusion that too much copyright “is detrimental to diversity of cultural expression” and that policy-makers in the EU are generally overly exposed to lobbyists that “repeat the prevailing dogma about the need for better copyright law”. According to the assessment, policy-makers who only listen to the loudest and strongest voice fail to implement the parts of the Convention they consider most valuable; diversity of cultural expression is particularly threatened by IPRs “in markets that are dominated by big corporations exercising collective power as oligopolies”.

The study considered selective state aid mechanisms in the audiovisual field risky insofar as they not only represent an incentive to clientelism but also serve as a bad model for authoritarian regimes with regard to the possibility of covert censorship and inhibiting cultural entrepreneurship.

The UNESCO Study on EU implementation of the 2005 UNESCO Convention is available here, while a summary of the same study is available here. Additional material and more information are also available on the diversitystudy.eu website, with a French and German translations of its short version and the high level discussants' contributions to be released at the end of June 2010.