Oct.12th, 2nd World Forum on Music and 32nd GA of the International Music Council open at Shanghai Hall of Xinhai Jinjiang Hotel in Beijing, with nearly 100 participants in music, business, education and law circles from Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa. Messages of congratulations come from CHEN Zhili, state counsellor of PRC, SUN Jiazheng , minister of Culture and president of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and Indrasen Vencatachellum, director of UNESCO.

Hosted by Richard Letts (Executive Director of the Music Council of Australia) and Peter Rantasa (Executive Director of the Music Information Centre Austria), the forum on the opening day centres on “Development in Music, Music in Development” and “Intellectual Property Rights”, with different countries’ speaker’ presentations heard and commented by participants.

WFM sessions 2 in the afternoon has nine speakers from authors, musicians, collective management organization, Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, on-line business and music industry, and WIPO who express in their respective point of view ideas to the questions about intellectual property rights in music industry and related sophisticate solution models in global policy layer.

The forum also introduces and discusses five kinds of rights the IMC endeavors to secure: the right for all children and adults to express themselves musically in all freedom; to learn musical languages and skills; to have access to musical involvement through participation, listening, creation, and information; the right for musical artists to develop their artistry and communicate through all media, with proper facilities at their disposal; to obtain just recognition and remuneration for their work.

WANG Chunyan, project lead of Creative Commons China Mainland and associate professor from law school, RUC, addresses in the afternoon. She introduces in her speech the Creative Commons licenses (CC licenses) and its use in music works, especially in various on-line music platforms. She also introduces CC plus, and explains how it can help make music prosper and develop while uphold musicians’ interests. Besides, she answers questions from collective management organization and other artists who are doubt “whether CC causes artists to give up their rights” or “whether CC is favorable for artists’ remuneration.” She adds, CC actually offers artists who are willing to share their artistic creations with others a legal and technological alternative which is easy and free. Meanwhile it helps artists obtain economical interests from their artistic creations, through CC plus. Danny O’Brien from Electronic Frontier Foundation illustrates CC puts favorable influence on users’ economical interests by some cases. All views above arouse participants’ great concern.

Themes for the following days are: “Many Musics-the UNESCO Convention of the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions”, “Many Musics-Sustainable Futures for Musical Traditions”, “Our Musical Future-Challenges and Chances” and “Our Musical Future-Is Music Education Prepared?”

(Text by SHU Jianwei, project assistant of Creative Commons China Mainland; Photo by ZHU Handong)