Grigory Zaslavsky. Is there copyright in Russia?

Is there copyright in Russia?
Grigory Zaslavsky

Publication date: January 11, 2002

Here are two of the most recent examples. On New Year's Eve, at the Mossovet Theater was performed the play "Cyrano de Bergerac" . Here - not about the performance, of course, but about authorship.

In the poster and program, of course, the author of the heroic comedy is indicated - the French playwright Edmond Rostand. Two translations are used in the performance, the names of the translators are also indicated. Stage director - Pavel Chomsky . Composer - Alexander Chevsky . Let's talk about music.

In the middle of the performance, music began to play, which theatergoers immediately recognized. The same melody - until, as they say, a perfect merger! - sounds in the most pathetic scenes in the Sovremennik Theater play “Three Comrades” . The latter came out a year and a half ago and has been a constant success ever since. This is important because it testifies to the courage of borrowing (after all, if we were talking about, for example, some modest theater from the outskirts of Moscow, then it would be much more difficult to detect a coincidence, and the very possibility of detection would be minimized).

For “Three Comrades” the musical score was produced in Asaf Faradzhev’s “Audioteatr” studio . Both Chevsky and Faradzhev are famous people in the music world. Chevsky is, one might say, a full-time composer of the Mossovet Theater, head of the educational institution , with his help the famous musicals “Jesus Christ - Superstar” , “The Game” were produced here, his own music is heard in other - almost all - performances of the theater. Faradzhev has been working - at least, he has been working - for many years on the most famous performances of Roman Viktyuk .

What happened?

This is what Farajev says. At one time, while working on “Three Comrades,” Faradzhev came to Alexander Chevsky, handed him a ready-made melody (“love theme”) with a request to write an apotheotic finale. Faradzhev did not like what he showed next; there is a different version in the play. And with that we parted ways...

From the ethical side, everything seems clear. Faradzhev calls this “dishonorable behavior towards a fellow worker.” What about the legal side? Complex issue. Borrowing (let's call it that), according to Asaf Farajev, is becoming much more dangerous today than, say, three or five years ago, when such stories went completely unpunished.

But who will undertake to prove that in this case we are talking about a violation of copyright, because, as far as I understand, the “theme of love” itself belongs to some third party. But Sovremennik has settled the copyright issue with this composer, Faradzhev claims. And the Mossovet Theater ?

What is it like to play a new performance in which everyone recognizes “foreign” music?

***

Now - about myself, my beloved. Some time ago, but not so long ago (that is, not so long ago that at that time the Copyright Law and that same world convention no longer applied), I watched the next issue of “Culture News”. Presenter Vladislav Flyarkovsky , as usual, is pouring out the nightingale. The conversation turns to Anatoly Vasiliev , and the presenter suddenly begins to pronounce words that are pleasantly familiar. These are my words! - I’m happy. Then the joy passes. Without any references, the presenter read out an entire paragraph from my article dedicated to the Triumph Prize winner Anatoly Vasiliev. The article was published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on January 16, 2001. The newspaper insists on the link, the author is indicated, but television and its “creative editors” and presenter authors still borrow without any references, treating private property as common, socialist, that is, no one’s property.

Small borrowings, in the sense - when they take it without asking (in other cases, but places - in a trolleybus, for example, or in the market, they usually use stronger expressions and shout: “Stop the thief!”), on the “Culture” channel, as and in general on television it’s completely commonplace. Those who prepare the material order the name they need on Yandex or Rambler , the search engine immediately offers them a hundred or two links, after which the editor quickly “masters” a certain amount of material. Why refer?

The advent of the Internet somehow decisively blurred the already established relationships between the author and numerous consumers, which took more or less civilized forms. The Internet has changed, so to speak, not the legal, but the actual attitude towards the very concept of the author and authorship, in a certain sense returning to the authorless, folk consciousness, when everything - both fairy tales and true stories - was no one’s and, accordingly, common, communal property , which everyone had the right to dispose of as if it were their own.

***

Everyone understands what copyright is in their own way. The presence of an appropriate law, its constant discussion and the desire for even better changes (that is, an understanding of the need for such changes) changes little in the minds of society and specific participants in the process. Be it a publishing house, a film company, a television channel, a theater.

Copyright law, for example, still does not consider the director as the author of the play. Directors don't like it. They want to receive the author’s, “performance”, along with the composer and playwright. We have to create, invent, and try in this area. With Nadezhda Ptushkina , such a trick, of course, would hardly have worked, but with Chekhov you can deal more boldly - by changing something, changing places, you can call yourself the author of the play, and the matter can be considered settled.

But actually, why not with Ptushkina? Specifically about her, the most repertoire playwright in Russia today, I haven’t heard anything like that yet. But with another famous author and his authorship, one Moscow theater managed to play a cruel joke. The theater commissioned the playwright to play about Charlie Chaplin . The author wrote it and sent it to the theater, where, by the way, either one or even two plays of his composition were already performed. The theater immersed itself in reading and studying the proposed material for a long time, after which - without a declaration of war (quite according to Trotsky - no war, no peace...) - a play about Chaplin appeared in the repertoire, but the author of the play is already listed as another person, he is also the director performance and theater director. The director himself did not even consider it necessary to hide the fact that he used a previously proposed text in his composition.

In cinema, a term has been coined for this “use”: “so-and-so’s original idea.” Although this does not save from arbitrariness. It is worth recalling that the loudest scandalous stories connected precisely with unmotivated or even motivated violation of copyright are connected precisely with cinema. In one case, the hero of the film, who was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, demanded that the screening of a film with his participation, directed by Olesya Fokina , be banned . In another, screenwriter Elena Raiskaya entered into a protracted conflict with the all-powerful film concern, trying to prohibit work on the film without her participation. The film was released successfully and was shown on television in the first days of the new year, although the conflict at some point moved into the stage of trial. And it even seemed that the script author would be able to defend his right to his own text.

The presence of even the most remarkable law (and the current copyright law is not remarkable, if only because some of the authors are not identified as such in it), alas, does not always translate the now very illusory copyright law into a truly legal, legislative plane. One of my friends started making a television program. I came up with a name, liked the name, the program was launched and is about to be released. Concerned about his copyright (fortunately, precedents are known), an acquaintance turns to the most famous patent office in the capital. They accept him and listen to him carefully. It turns out to be impossible to register the name. You can register a trademark. "But I'm not going to sell anything!" “Then try putting a copyright symbol at the end of the program,” he was advised. "And this will help?" - "Probably yes". In any case, they told him, this seemingly non-binding badge will serve as the basis for proceedings if it occurs to anyone to unauthorizedly copy something. They advised to respect your own right to the program in an even more simple way: record the first episodes from the air, convert the cassette and send it to yourself at your home address. If the television company is going to part with the author, but at the same time wants to keep the program in its original form, the unopened envelope will serve as a reliable argument. To do this, however, it is necessary that the credits indicate that you are the author. And they didn’t take any money for the consultation. They say there are no prices. Now, if we were talking about a trademark...