PRESENTATION

Thanks to digitized telecommunications technology, different media can be found simultaneously on a single support medium: texts, still or animated images, music, graphics, video, photographs, and so on. Multimedia producers often use existing works for their CD-ROMs, CDIs, or Web sites—and most of these works are protected by copyright.

Because of the complexity of the steps that must be taken to authorize use of works, the absence of rules with regard to rates, and the impossibility of controlling international distribution of works, a number of artists’ professional associations and their management companies have gotten together to discuss various problems related to the new technologies.

DAMIC (the new name of the Board of artists for the Internet) was created jointly by six associations representing artists in six categories recognized under the laws on the professional status of artists: dramatic arts (AQAD), audiovisual (SARTEC), the visual arts (RAAV), literature (UNEQ), arts and crafts (CMAQ), and music (SPACQ).

First of all, DAMIC wanted to verify whether more than one category of works could be found on a multimedia support medium. An exhaustive study, CD-ROM and use of works, conducted in September 1997 by Martin Pelletier, arrived at the conclusion that several categories of works are used in creating a multimedia product.

Following a meeting with the Association des producteurs en multimédia du Québec (APMQ) in December 1997, DAMIC began to work jointly with the producers to find solutions to the difficulties encountered in the process of obtaining permissions and gaining better control of the use of existing works incorporated into multimedia products.

A report was written in October 1999 by the co-ordinator of DAMIC, Michel Beauchemin: Feasibility Study on the Establishment of a Single Window for Copyright Clearancein Multimedia Production. The report emphasized the need for a single gateway that would provide information on the copyrights to be dealt with, the existing administration agencies, the rate schedules in force, and the procedures to follow for easy copyright permissions. This organization would also serve as a mediator between producers and artists’ associations or management companies and ensure all copyright holders of better control on the economic exploitation of their works.

DAMIC is still in the preliminary stages: it provides information to users and helps to minimize the number of steps needed to use works in different categories. In the near future, the agency hopes to follow in the footsteps of SESAM, which is already responding much better to the new realities of digitized telecommunications technology.