D3.1 Mapping Document on income development of authors and performers and copyright reversal in EU

The mapping document is part of Task 3.1. of Work Package 3 – “Authors and Performers”, titled “Perspective of Creators and performing Artists on Digitization, Copyright and the Digital Single Market”.

The objective of this document is to address the income development of authors and performers and their experience with digitization and copyright reversal. The task is divided into two parts. Part 1 provides an overview of the existing literature with regards to income/earnings of authors and performers, their experience with digital platforms and AI as well as the effects of Covid. Part 2 of the document reviews all provisions in EU countries for reverting rights to authors and performers, a potential legal lever for increasing income.

In Part 1 our focus was to understand existing theoretical and empirical research on authors and performers. We provide an overview of notable studies from various countries over the last 40 years and identify how authors and performers struggle with their earnings and how they lead portfolio lives to supplement their artistic income. Consistent with the aim of this task we have also discussed the experience of digitization on artists’ income/earnings specifically with regards to digital platforms. Digital platforms themselves are complex and lack transparency which makes artists' positions more vulnerable. We further identify the role Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays for artists and whether it is seen as an opportunity or a threat to artists. Another significant challenge that is highlighted in this document is that of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has influenced artists and their earnings till now.

Part 2 of the report is on Reversion Rights authored by Ula Furgal from CREATe, University of Glasgow, in which she discusses the full list of identified national provisions (per 19 Nov 2020). The provisions are presented in the form of tables, with each Member State having its own section. The next step to this task involves a survey that will be distributed to artists all over the European Union (EU) on the issues addressed in this report. Because of the nature and ongoing changes in digital trends and COVID, we will be including any new updates while developing the survey. We expect to deliver this survey to participants via social media for higher reach. Once the data is collected, we will analyse the data, and the results will be delivered as a final report.

Please note: a screen-reader accessible version of this report can be downloaded via this link https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1csfTJcWj8NLqKDqnsu38-dPRFZGjrAAJ

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870626.