WSA Film Music Days: Capacity Triangle Panel: Composing in the Age of AI: Legal Challenges in Modern Film Scoring

In the current web of uncertainty, at least one thing is clear: AI’s rapid development poses many new legal issues. While the European Union’s AI Act is a first attempt at providing legal certainty for rightsholders, this legislation does not yet offer concrete solutions to address the fact that creators’ works have already been used without their consent, transparency or remuneration. In addition, as the market share of VoDs continues to grow, composers are too often left with the short end of stick, being offered contracts that ask them to sign away all their rights and future income in exchange for a lump sum. Join us for a discussion on these important challenges and learn what you can do as a composer to better protect yourself and your rights.

This talk is organised with the collaboration of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA) and supported by Creative Europe.

Anselm Kreuzer - Moderator
Anselm Kreuzer is a composer of music for television, film, and other audiovisual media. He has written numerous title tunes for TV shows, score music for several TV series, and a huge oeuvre of production music. He is the President of Composers Club Germany since 2023, where he has been a Board Member since 2014. Anselm is also Board Member at ECSA, a deputy in the Works Committee of GEMA since 2015, a guest lecturer at several universities and the author of two monographs on film music.

Michelino Bisceglia is a renowned Belgian composer known for his scores for My Sailor, My Love and The Eight Mountains. He has won several awards for his work in film music, including the World Soundtrack Award Public Choice in 2014 for his work on the film Marina.

Jesper Hansen is an acclaimed score composer working primarily with music for film and television in his native Denmark. His music has been used in countless audiovisual productions around the world, and his concert music has been performed in many European coc untries by both soloists and ensembles. He is currently a board member of Koda (Danish PRO), BFM (Danish Film Composers Guild), Autor (Danish Composers and Songwriters), and is Vice-President of ECSA, as well as Chair of the ECSA’s audiovisual and film music committee.

Jozefien Vanherpe studied law at KU Leuven and the University of Cambridge. After having worked several years as an attorney in the sector of intellectual property law, she switched to academia and successfully defended her PhD on the legal framework of contractual dynamics in the digitised music industry. She now works as a professor at the Centre for IT & IP Law at KU Leuven (CiTiP), where she teaches various courses on intellectual property rights. Her research interests include the appropriate regulation of AI technologies from the perspective of intellectual property law.

Barbara Persyn has been an advocate for copyright protection for over 10 years. As a legal expert specialized in intellectual property rights, she began her career at a collective management organization. In addition to defending authors’ rights, she actively lobbied for the EU Copyright Directive and its implementation in national law. She currently works for the Flemish Screenwriters Guild (Scenaristengilde) and represents several film composers as a talent agent at Strike a Score. Barbara continues to strive for a fair compensation for audiovisual authors.

Accredited visitors can attend this talk for free, without registration. Others are asked to present a ticket.