Trial lecture - time and Place
Adjudication committee
- Partner Are Stenvik, BA-HR (leader)
- Professor Morten Rosenmeier, University of Copenhagen (1. opponent)
- Associate Professor Sanna Wolk, Uppsala University
Chair of defence
Supervisors
- Professor Ole- Andreas Rognstad, University of Oslo
- Professor Kåre Lilleholt, University of Oslo
Summary
According to the Norwegian Copyright Act, performers have protection for their performances of a work (åndsverklovens (åvl.) § 42). Performers have exclusive rights to make reproductions of their performances, and to reproduce copies of their performances. They also have exclusive rights to make their performances or the copy of it, available to the public.
In my thesis I survey whether they alternatively can seek protection for their interpretation of the work (as an adaption), as a copyrightable work (åvl. § 1).
I have interviewed different artists about their working processes with regard to a performance; dancers, musicians, conductors, theatre directors and actors.
The Norwegian Copyright Act (åvl. § 1) gives the author protection for a creation of a work. From case law one has determined the requirements to be an originality demand, requirements which EU law in recent years has complemented the understanding of. To get copyright protection one has to give a potential work a personal touch, which one gives it by making free and creative choices. Especially in the Painer-case, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) describes how one can gain copyright protection by making free and creative choices at different stages and in different ways while deciding on the expression in a work (in a portrait photography in the Painer- case).
From the interviews, case law and esthetic theory within the different artist fields I have picked to be relevant to survey, one finds that performers make an interpretation of the work and decide how this should be expressed. As I see it, performers normally make free and creative choices while seeking an interpretation, and in their choices on how they shall express the interpretation.
Based on this, I discuss in my thesis whether they should be protected as authors and rather should be protected by copyright.