The treaty aims to protect musicians and the recording industry from the threat of piracy posed by the internet and other digital technology. A related treaty, the WIPO Copyright Treaty, will enter into force on 6th March 2002. Entry into force for each treaty comes three months after its 30th ratification or accession has been received by WIPO.
The Performances and Phonograms Treaty protects performing artists, such as singers and musicians, and record companies. The Copyright Treaty protects other categories of creators such as composers, artists and writers and companies in the culture and information industries.
The Performances and Phonograms Treaty improves the protection of performing artists and producers by providing the legal basis to prevent unauthorised exploitation of their performances, whether live or recorded, or phonograms, on digital networks. It gives them exclusive rights for reproduction, distribution, commercial rental and making their performances and phonograms available to the public on the internet.
For the first time, the moral rights of performers will be recognised at the international level. The Performances and Phonograms Treaty includes the moral rights of attribution and integrity for sound performances. They are given the right to be identified as performers and to object under certain conditions to distortions, mutilations or other prejudicial modifications of their performances, for example through digital manipulation.
The Performances and Phonograms Treaty also sets up an international framework for possible payments to performing artists and producers of phonograms for broadcasting and other forms of communication to the public of commercial phonograms. Like the Copyright Treaty, the Performances and Phonograms Treaty contains provisions on technical measures for identifying and managing protected performances and sound recordings. It also provides protection against unauthorised reproduction, distribution and rental of recorded music.
The two treaties update and improve the international protection which was established prior to the development and widespread use of PCs and the internet. The Copyright Treaty updates and supplements the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the major international copyright treaty in the world today which was originally adopted in 1886, and most recently revised in 1971.
The Performances and Phonograms Treaty updates and supplements the existing major related rights treaty, the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations (adopted in 1961).
The treaties also break new ground by ensuring that rightholders can effectively use technology to protect their rights and to license their works on-line. An anti-circumvention provision requires countries to provide legal protection and effective remedies against the circumvention of technological measures, such as encryption. They also require countries to prohibit the deliberate alteration or deletion of electronic rights management information - that is, information that identifies a work, performance, or phonogram, or its author, performer or owner, or the terms and conditions for its use.
Both treaties also contain provisions on rights of distribution and rental, an obligation for countries to provide adequate and effective enforcement measures and optional rights to be remunerated for certain forms of broadcasting or communication to the public.