Awareness and education is going to be the only way we can eradicate this (piracy and copyright shortfalls) globally and forcefully. When a young person, a child, begins to repudiate what is wrong, we will begin to build better generations”.
Aldo Fragoso, general director of industrial property of the IMPI.
Since 1996, in its article 40, the Federal Copyright Law allows the author or authors of a literary or artistic work —that is, the owner or owners of the patrimonial right— to demand a compensatory remuneration when they notice that a violation is being made. copying or reproduction without your permission.
More than 25 years have passed since the inclusion of this right in the law and technology has advanced towards smart telephony, seventh-generation computers and endless devices that interact with the senses. Along with these devices, literary, musical, photographic, literary content and a variety of artistic expressions that enrich the attractiveness of these technologies have become widespread.
This has left the owners of the patrimonial right of artistic works unable to monitor the authorized or unauthorized use of their works, so much so that the legal requirements for the protection of copyright are different in this context and, with it, the current law has been overtaken by a reality that requires reforms on the design and regulation of compensatory remuneration.
The foregoing is part of the argument put forward by associations that defend intellectual property such as the Coalition for Legal Access to Culture (CALC), which is chaired by the lawyer Quetzalli de la Concha, who declared on Tuesday that the reform in the law to the compensatory remuneration “is a historical debt”.
Article 40 of said law, he added, has become sterile because it is not complete, it says that authors must be remunerated, but it does not say who or how. And it is necessary to promote a reform that helps strengthen regulation. Who should pay? All the devices that give the opportunity to use that range of content, because you have to think that creative content is a fundamental part of the value chain of devices”.
They promise that now the reform will pass
The issue is not new. The reform of the Federal Copyright Law has been urged by the authors’ guilds, especially by composers, for several years. The last attempt happened between 2020 and 2021, when the Culture and Cinematography Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, in the previous legislature, then headed by Sergio Mayer Bretón, presented an initiative in this regard. However, in April 2021 it was criticized and thrown down.
However, this week the issue returned to the forefront of the Legislative Power after the Chamber of Senators offered this Monday a tribute to the composers of Mexico. During that special session, PRI Senator Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong declared:
“An initiative was presented in the Chamber of Deputies in 2021 and it was rejected for political reasons, as so many things are defined in this country, without substantive argumentation. For this reason, I propose both to the president of the board and to the president of the Senate, and I am sure that there will be an immediate yes, that through the Belisario Domínguez Institute they can set up a work table, have the initiative immediately and that We can present and approve it by September at the latest,” he declared, and guaranteed that the initiative will have the approval of Senator Ricardo Monreal, coordinator of the Morena parliamentary group, with whom he has already spoken about it.
“Artists are financially illiterate”
This Tuesday, the CALC convened a meeting/conference on the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day. Authors from different fields were invited to the meeting: the writer Christel Guczka, the film writer, director and producer Luis Felipe Ferra, the composer Bruno Danzza and the musician Jean Paul Bideau, who were accompanied by Aldo Fragoso, General Director of Industrial Property of the IMPI, and Quetzalli de la Concha.
During the meeting, Luis Felipe Ferra declared that “artists are extremely vulnerable entities. The role we play is frankly special insofar as we paradoxically fascinate and at the same time make society uncomfortable. Sometimes people applaud for opening their eyes and other times, for the same reason, they condemn us”. But later he recognized: “we are practical financial illiterate, as artists we have very little skill, very little nose for business.”
To the question about how the life of a writer would change if in our country 4 out of 10 books read were not apocryphal, Christel Guczka replied: “it would be different, I know I would continue creating anyway, but, of course, maybe I could dedicate myself to fully to what I like the most, which is writing. It is because of illegal downloads and the improper use of materials that we do not see the profits that correspond to us by right, many times we have to look for other work niches to compensate for what a royalty does not give us to live on”.
For his part, the IMPI representative pointed out that “the digital environment is nothing more than a shelf. And the legislators already understood it, although, from my point of view, a little late”.
What does the current law say?
Article 40.- Owners of copyright and related rights may demand compensatory remuneration for any copy or reproduction made without their authorization and without being covered by any of the limitations set forth in articles 148 and 151. of this Law.
Find out about the background:
Why are opinions divided on compensatory remuneration for private copying?