On the 10th day of August 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced to release a consortium “WIPO for Creators” with an objective of achieving awareness of IP Rights for creators in all parts of the world. WIPO has come into an agreement with a Sweden based Music Rights Awareness Foundation (MRAF) to help the music artists get fair compensation for their work by organising activities which will create awareness about Intellectual Property Rights.
MRAF was founded in the year 2016, since then this very foundation has been working in educating the music artists about their IP rights. As Molinder, one of the founders of MRAF, in an interview with the billboards pointed out the fact that whenever a music artist is asked about the revenue or profit one will be making once the creation is out; it take weeks for that artist to come up with a value of his own creation. No doubt that the real value of such creation cannot be assessed in terms of money only but the very fact that an artists is always unsure about how much compensation or remuneration he deserves for his work indicates the lack of awareness of IP Rights and then this very lack of awareness leads to exploitation of an artist. Molinder says that an artist should be able to access “high level answer” to the question within 60 to 90 seconds ideally and hence there is desperate need to work upon such digital education platform for creators.
The most impressive thing about this very initiative by WIPO is that a platform will be created for the artists wherein education videos will be made available for them and such videos will be from other creators so as to provide the artists a better understanding and connection with the same. There surely are enough texts and material about IP rights available on internet but listening and learning from an artist about IP rights will be much more effective than reading the complicated texts.
As Francis Gurry, WIPO’s Director General said in one of the press release “The current COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the importance of the creative industries in society and the need to ensure that creators are justly remunerated for their work which can only happen through an effective copyright system that provide both the incentives and the rewards for the creative process in an increasingly global and interconnected digital content marketplace”. This very consortium will not only educate the creators on their IP rights but will explain them about the importance of data management and how to include that in finalising the IP strategy for their creation.
This a welcomed measure undertaken by WIPO which will definitely paved a way towards having a more informed and aware/awaked community of music artists. This will enable the artists to effectively speculate monetary results of their intellectual investments and take informed decision accordingly.
