Exploring Additional Global Copyright Treaties: Rome, WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, Buenos Aires Convention

When most people think about international copyright law, the Berne Convention is usually the first treaty that comes to mind. But the global copyright framework is far more layered than that. Three other significant treaties – the Rome Convention, the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), and the Buenos Aires Convention – each address gaps that Berne alone could not fill. Understanding these treaties is essential for anyone studying intellectual property law, because they collectively define how rights are protected across different kinds of creative works, different media, and different regions of the world.

The Rome Convention, 1961: protecting performers, producers, and broadcasters 🔗

By the mid-twentieth century, it was increasingly clear that copyright law as it stood – built around protecting authors of literary and artistic works – left three important groups without adequate protection: performers, producers of sound recordings (phonograms), and broadcasting organisations. The Rome Convention of 1961, formally known as the International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations, was adopted on 26 October 1961 to fill this gap. It entered into force in 1964 and currently has 97 contracting parties.

Administered jointly by WIPO, the International Labour Organization (ILO), and UNESCO, the Convention operates alongside – not instead of – existing copyright protection. Article 1 makes this explicit: protection under the Rome Convention does not in any way affect copyright in literary and artistic works.

Who does the Rome Convention protect? 🔗

The Convention protects three distinct categories of right-holders. Performers – actors, singers, musicians, dancers, and anyone else who performs literary or artistic works – are protected against certain acts they have not consented to. These include the broadcasting or public communication of their live performances, the fixation (recording) of their live performances, and the reproduction of such fixations for purposes other than those originally agreed upon. A key limitation applies here: once a performer has consented to incorporating their performance into an audiovisual fixation, those performer-specific protections no longer apply.

Producers of phonograms – those who make sound recordings – have the right to authorise or prohibit direct or indirect reproduction of their phonograms. The Convention also establishes that when a commercially published phonogram is used for broadcasting or other public communication, a single equitable remuneration must be paid to the performer, the phonogram producer, or both. However, contracting states retain the discretion to limit or not apply this remuneration rule at all.

Broadcasting organisations are protected against the rebroadcasting of their broadcasts without authorisation, against the fixation of their broadcasts, against reproduction of such fixations, and against the public communication of their television broadcasts in places where admission is charged.

Duration of protection and exceptions 🔗

The Rome Convention sets a minimum protection term of 20 years, calculated from the end of the year in which the fixation was made (for phonograms), the performance took place (for unfixed performances), or the broadcast occurred. In practice, many national laws have extended this to 50 years, particularly for phonograms and performances.

The Convention also allows contracting states to provide exceptions in their domestic law for purposes such as private use, reporting on current events, teaching, and scientific research – mirroring the kinds of exceptions typically found in copyright law for literary works.

The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), 1996: copyright for the digital age 🔗

The Rome Convention was crafted in an era of analogue media. By the 1990s, the internet and digital technology had fundamentally changed how performances and recordings were distributed and consumed. The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, adopted in Geneva on 20 December 1996 and entering into force on 20 May 2002, was specifically designed to respond to these challenges. It is often referred to alongside the WIPO Copyright Treaty as one of the “Internet Treaties.” As of 2023, the WPPT has 112 contracting parties.

Importantly, the WPPT does not require its member states to also be parties to the Rome Convention. It builds on and extends the protections in the Rome Convention, but operates as a standalone treaty. Its obligations in no way reduce protection under Rome where both apply.

Rights granted under the WPPT 🔗

Performers under the WPPT receive both moral rights and economic rights. On the moral rights side, performers have the right to be identified as the performer of their work and the right to object to modifications that would harm their honour or reputation. These moral rights persist even after the performer’s death, though contracting states may narrow this protection.

Economically, performers enjoy a comprehensive set of exclusive rights in their performances fixed in phonograms: the right of reproduction, the right of distribution, the right of rental, and critically, the right of making available – the last of these being the right to authorise or prohibit on-demand access to their performances over the internet or similar networks. For live (unfixed) performances, performers have the right to authorise broadcasting and public communication.

Producers of phonograms enjoy the same four economic rights – reproduction, distribution, rental, and making available – in relation to their phonograms. Both performers and producers are also entitled to a single equitable remuneration when phonograms published for commercial purposes are used for broadcasting or other public communication.

Technological protection and digital rights management 🔗

One of the most forward-looking aspects of the WPPT is its obligation on member states to provide legal protection against circumvention of technological measures – such as encryption – used to protect performances and phonograms. States must also protect against removal or alteration of rights management information, meaning the embedded data that identifies the performer, the producer, or the terms of use. These provisions directly address the realities of digital piracy and have influenced legislation in many countries, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States.

The WPPT also clarifies that the reproduction right applies fully in the digital environment. Storing a protected performance or phonogram in digital form on an electronic medium constitutes reproduction within the meaning of the treaty. This was a critical clarification at a time when debates raged over whether digital copies even qualified as “reproductions” in the legal sense.

Duration and limitations 🔗

Unlike the Rome Convention’s minimum 20-year term, the WPPT requires a minimum protection term of 50 years. For limitations and exceptions, the treaty incorporates the well-known “three-step test” from the Berne Convention: exceptions are permissible only in certain special cases that do not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonably prejudice the rights holder’s legitimate interests. Agreed statements accompanying the treaty make clear that existing exceptions acceptable under Berne may be extended into the digital environment, and that new exceptions appropriate to the digital context may also be devised.

The Buenos Aires Convention, 1910: an early Pan-American framework 🔗

Predating both the Rome Convention and the WPPT by decades, the Buenos Aires Convention was signed on 11 August 1910 during the Fourth International Conference of American States in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was adopted by 18 American republics and entered into force in 1911 after the United States ratified it. While its direct relevance today is limited – since all its parties are now also members of the Berne Convention – understanding it helps trace the evolution of international copyright cooperation.

Copyright notice as the key requirement 🔗

The Buenos Aires Convention’s central mechanism was straightforward: copyright obtained in one signatory state would be recognised in all other signatory states, provided the work carried a notice indicating that rights were reserved. This gave rise to the familiar phrase “All rights reserved” (in Spanish, Todos los derechos reservados), which remains a common copyright notice even today, long after the Convention’s practical relevance has diminished. The Convention’s Article 3 required only that such a statement of reservation appear in the work – no additional formalities were needed across borders.

The rule of the shorter term 🔗

On the question of duration, the Buenos Aires Convention applied the “rule of the shorter term” under Articles 6 and 7: protection in a given country was granted for whichever was shorter – the term in the protecting country or the term in the country of origin of the work. The country of origin was defined as the place of first publication in the Americas; if a work was published simultaneously in multiple signatory countries, the country with the shortest protection term was treated as the country of origin. This rule was designed to prevent authors from exploiting different national terms to extract longer-than-intended protection across borders.

Legacy and continued relevance 🔗

The Buenos Aires Convention was explicitly preserved as a “special agreement” under Article 18 of the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, ensuring it would not be nullified by the newer instrument. Since all its parties subsequently joined the Berne Convention – which grants automatic protection without any formalities – the Buenos Aires notice requirement became largely redundant in practice. However, the Convention retains residual significance in determining the country of origin of a work for the purpose of calculating the “shorter term” in countries that still apply that rule.

The phrase “All rights reserved” that the Convention popularised has proved remarkably durable. You will still find it printed inside books, at the bottom of websites, and in music albums – a living remnant of a century-old treaty that shaped how the Americas approached copyright before modern international frameworks took hold.

How these treaties fit together 🔗

Each of these three treaties addresses a distinct layer of the international copyright system. The Rome Convention extended protection beyond authors to the performers and organisations who bring creative works to audiences. The WPPT modernised those protections for the digital environment, addressing on-demand streaming, digital piracy, and technological rights management. The Buenos Aires Convention represents an earlier, region-specific attempt to build mutual copyright recognition across the Americas – notable for the notice requirement it introduced and the “shorter term” rule it established.

Taken together with the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement, these treaties form a layered framework that attempts to harmonise copyright protection across vastly different legal traditions, economies, and technologies. For students of IP law, understanding each treaty’s specific purpose and scope is essential to understanding why the global copyright system looks the way it does – and why it continues to evolve.

What do you think? With the WPPT having been adopted nearly three decades ago, do you think it adequately addresses emerging technologies like AI-generated music and deepfake performances, or does the international community need an entirely new treaty? And given that the Buenos Aires Convention’s “All rights reserved” notice has long outlived its legal necessity, what does its continued use tell us about how copyright norms persist in public consciousness even after the law has moved on?

References

1. https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text/289757
2. https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/rome/
3. https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/international-convention-protection-performers-producers-phonograms-and-broadcasting-organizations
4. https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wppt/
5. https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/105th-congress/17/document-text
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Performances_and_Phonograms_Treaty
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires_Convention
8. https://www.unesco.org/creativity/en/policy-monitoring-platform/wipo-copyright-treaty-wct-and-wipo-performances-and-phonograms-treaty-wppt-also-known-internet