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Rh works or works whose term of copyright protection has expired. In the digital world, the extension of the copyright scope to the mere use of these works, which stems from the enforcement of a very broad exclusive right of digital reproduction, concerns the rights of the authors as well as the rights of performers, recording producers and broadcasters. The rationale for the legal protection of the type of creativity and economic investment which characterise acts of performance, recording and broadcasting of creative works is very similar to that of copyright, from both an economic and moral point of view. According to the basic economics of intellectual property, performances, recordings and broadcasts are non-excludable and non-rival goods (i.e. “public goods”) that are very costly to produce but very cheap to copy and reuse. To avoid underproduction of these goods, a suitable copyright system should seek to foster cultural innovation by providing an incentive (or reward) to performers, recording producers and broadcasters. In addition to that, there is also a moral argument which underlies the protection of performances in all those jurisdictions (mainly civil law jurisdictions) where performers’ rights include moral prerogatives which seek to protect the reputation of performers against prejudicial uses which might call into question their paternity or affect the integrity of their performances.

In European copyright systems, the enforcement of neighbouring rights depends on the enforcement of the author’s rights, in such a way that each act of performance, recording and broadcasting of a work protected by copyright shall be authorized by the copyright owner in order to be lawful. Before the adoption of Directive 2011/77, the most significant distinction between the exclusive rights of authors and those of performers and record producers was made, at least in the copyright laws of the European Union, by their respective terms of duration: 70 years