The Copyright Act Review is back on, with a proposed Stage 1 set of proposals being finessed for feedback.

Although we lobbied long and hard on behalf of directors in the previous review started in 2017, the whole review was ultimately put in the too hard basket in 2020 by the government. COVID didn’t help.

DEGANZ has been seeking shared copyright for directors with producers since 2005.

The NZ Copyright Act says that the author and therefore the copyright holder is “in the case of a sound recording or film, the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the making of the recording or film are undertaken.”

The default interpretation of this has long been that it is the producer who does this, therby making them the author, and thus the copyright holder.

Our position though is that the Director is the creative decision maker in a process of artistic collaboration who takes final responsibility for the aesthetic cohesion and artistic integrity of the work. One of the elements the Director uses to create the final work is the screenplay. The other underlying elements include the actors’ performances, cinematography, the production design, the wardrobe and makeup, the editing, the musical score, the sound design, etc. These are underlying works that contribute to the film through the talent of the Director.

Just as the writer is the “author” of the screenplay, and the composer is the “author” of the musical score, the Director is an “author” of the film or audiovisual work.

What has prompted the government to put the Copyright Act back on the table is the major transformation brought about by the digital age, and the scary beast that is AI. As well, it has obligations to address certain copyright requirements that were put in place with both the recent UK and EU Free Trade Ageements (FTAs).

As part of the representations we made on behalf of directors as the FTAs with Europe and the UK were being negotiated, we highlighted:

• In the UK, their copyright act stipulates that the producer and the principal director are joint copyright shareholders of the film.
• In the EU, an EU council directive requires all European member states to recognise the principal director of a film or audio-visual work as an author—and therefore first owner of copyright of that work.
• In more than 37 other territories around the world, the director is the primary copyright holder in the work.

As directors are already recognised as authors with moral rights over their work under the NZ Copyright Act, you’d think it was a no brainer for government to accept that the economic rights conferred by copyright would go to directors, too. But no, that logic has proven one step too far for our beaurocrats and ministers to get their heads around since we started way back when.

We are back at it in this stage of the review, though. Even though it’s not on the government’s agenda at this point.

It’s a long hard row that we have to hoe until plain common sense sees through.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 26 June 2025