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 What is the strategy?
Members of the Directors' and Producers' Rights Society (DPRS) are being asked to assign their rights in future
television programmes to the Society.
BECTU, DPRS and the Directors Guild of Great Britain (DGGB) are in
the process of contacting every film and TV director to bring them on
board. For the action to succeed it is essential that the vast
majority of directors support and believe in it.
Assignment of rights to a collecting society is not something new.
For many years it has been the established practice for British composers
and for writers and directors in the rest of Europe. Creative rights
are best defended collectively.
Once you have assigned your rights to the DPRS you need take no
further individual action. You have been removed from the firing line.
The assignment agreements which directors sign with the DPRS will not
be implemented until we are sure we have the support we need for the
action to be successful. An Extraordinary General Meeting of the DPRS must
approve both the action itself and the implementation date before the
DPRS countersigns and accepts the assignments. (We currently
anticipate that the EGM may be called for October 1999, with an implementation date of
1 January 2000.)
When we receive your signed assignment we will acknowledge its receipt,
supplying you with a copy on request.
The contractual system will very much as at present after assignment. You (or your agent) will negotiate fees in
the usual way. All clauses relating to rights must however be deleted and
replaced by a clause (provided by the DPRS in the form of a sticker)
specifying that they are already held by the DPRS and are therefore no
longer negotiable.
The action need not stop production, nor affect transmission. Once
your contract has been negotiated you will notify the DPRS, which will
release the rights that enable the first broadcast to take place for a
nominal charge of £1. The DPRS will also release rights for other
exploitations subject to payment for each use in line with the
standard tariff proposed by the DPRS, BECTU, the DGGB and directors' agents.
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