Circus and Copyright Law

I wrote thesis about circus and copyright law. Currently it’s only available in Finnish, but if you are interested in hearing more, please contact me.

Abstract: Circus and Author’s Right Legislation

In this thesis, I study circus artist’s right to a work in the means of copyright law and the right to have performer’s rights. This subject has been dealt poorly in Finnish forensic books and knowledge of the subject seems to be at quite a poor level in Finland. I will start the thesis by going shortly through the history of Circus and copyright law. My main objectives are acts, which are found in the first and the fifth chapter of the Finnish copyright law. That is, focusing more on a work and the protection of performers. My purpose is mainly to focus on connections between Circus and copyright.

Circus artists have always created original artistic products, but still in Finland, they are too often mentioned as artists who supposedly do not have performer’s rights, because they do not perform works. So, I go through the historical reasons why the essence of circus artist’s creation as a work is not understood. The consequences of this are influencing quite strongly to the protection of the performing artist. Interesting additional information about circus artist’s performer’s rights can be found in the 80’s from the committee reports of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which I will examine in my thesis. These reports more or less understood the possibility that circus artists perform a work. Also, the study by Frank Gotzen in 1977, which purpose was to harmonize performer’s rights inside EEC provides interesting information. In addition, I will take a look at the international situation of circus artist’s right to a work and circus artist’s performer’s rights. In Finland there are no legal cases related to this topic, so cases from abroad give important additional information. At the end, I go briefly through the legal agreement policies related to circus artist’s performances.

Keywords: Circus, circus artists, magicians, copyright, copyright act, related rights

Whole thesis about circus and copyright law