Amount Awarded: $25,000
The goal for this project is to try to find legal ways to secure performers' market position in a more sustainable way, by convincing the European legal community to categorize the creative and intellectual input from performers correctly - as art. Performers are authors, and qualify for copyright. The project will attempt to do this by comparing the European neighboring right model to the copyright structure for performers in the US (project 1). A change to copyright protection is believed to have great impact for performers in Europe by strengthening their legal, societal, and economical position. In addition, we want to explore the consequences of changes in collective contracts between producers and actors, to find out if such changes can strengthen the Norwegian ownership to film and TV-series (project 2). A strengthened national ownership to such content is also important for cultural heritage and development of a nation's identity.