Legal Journal

Media and Entertainment Law

Media has become an area that covers many topics such as television, the Internet, social media, cinema, broadcast, publishing, music, games and advertisement. It would be therefore better to name it as “multimedia”. Multimedia technology constantly keeps changing the way we work, educate, communicate and entertain ourselves.

It has become even more important to consider all legal phases of creation of a product by the media, especially in the “entertainment” business, and sharing such product with public.

While making a legal assessment, it is necessary to take into account the relation and link between several elements of multimedia investments including qualification and elements of the work, ownership of the work, parts of the work that vest copyright  and other protection mechanisms.       

In order for an intellectual product to benefit from the protection regulated under Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works (“the Law”), such product shall bear the characteristic of its author, shall be formed in a manner that would reflect such characteristic and shall fall into one of the class of works as defined under the Law. Multimedia products do not explicitly and wholly benefit from such protection under the Law. These products, however, might benefit from the protection as a work in case the elements of the products such as photos, video, audio, image and text meet the conditions to be qualified as a work under the Law. It shall also be recognized that a multimedia product may be formed jointly by writers, actors, directors, composers and designers.   

Multimedia

Multimedia contains several sectors and phases within itself such as broadcast, telecommunication, software and others. Multimedia actors bring several sources together including human, video, audio, text, photography, graphic design, software and animation. Consequently, any agreement concerning the multimedia business shall be prepared specific to that project in a way to protect the rights, interest and statute of the parties concerned and shall meet the expectations of such parties. Preparation of proper legal framework of a project can in fact be considered as the best investment that can be granted to the project. Otherwise the future of the project may be endangered.  

Law on Intellectual and Artistic Works

While it is important under the Law to conclude the transfer of economic rights of authors in a legally appropriate manner, it is also crucial to license the pre-existing works in accordance with the new types of rights arising from technological developments is also crucial. In this respect, existing license/copyright agreements shall be evaluated and updated when necessary to cover such new rights.

Protection of Multimedia Products

Although a multimedia product itself is not subject to protection as a separate “work”, it might contain several elements that are developed by different methods and may be subject to legal protection. For instance, it should be considered whether and how an “original animation character” or an “original music” in a computer game can be protected. It has to be assessed under the same conditions whether the television program formats and commercials can be qualified as a work. For instance, commercials on the television can be defined as cinema work should they bear the characteristic of their authors as defined under the Law and the qualifications of a cinematographic work. 

Piracy has become a problem with the digitalization of almost all the media platforms and creation of electronic books, portals for TV series, digital music albums, movie archives and combating against piracy is, getting even harder every day. Given that corporate and personal digitalization is inevitable, it is of great importance to develop protection mechanisms in line with the technical developments, against piracy.

Av. Beril Çelebi Cem