Entertainment law is an umbrella concept imported from American practice; it gathers the legal issues connected with the film, television, music, theatre and sports industries. In Georgia no statute bears that name: the field is assembled from individual acts, and its legal core is the Law on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, while media-services regulation rests on the broadcasting legislation.
The Scope of the Law's Regulation
Article one of the Law on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights defines its scope: it regulates the relations connected with property and personal non-property copyright arising upon the creation and use of works of science, literature and art. The law further covers relations connected with the neighbouring rights of performers, producers of phonograms and videograms, and broadcasting organizations, as well as relations connected with the rights of the maker of a database.
What Is Protected and What Is Not
Under article five, copyright extends to works of science, literature and art that are the result of intellectual-creative activity, irrespective of the purpose, merit, genre, volume, form or means of expression of the work. The right covers a work existing in objective form, regardless of whether it has been published or made publicly known. Copyright, however, does not extend to ideas, methods, processes, systems, means, concepts, principles, discoveries or facts, even where they are expressed, described or explained in a work.
Categories of Works
Article six lists the protected objects that make this body of law practical for the entertainment industry: literary works, including a book, brochure, article and computer program; dramatic and musical-dramatic works, choreographic and pantomimic works and other stage works; musical works with or without text; audiovisual works; works of sculpture, painting, graphics and lithography; decorative-applied and monumental works; theatrical-design works; photographic works; maps, plans and sketches; processed works — translations, adaptations, screen versions, reviews, stagings, compilations and musical arrangements; and composite works — collections, encyclopedias, anthologies and databases.
Importantly, processed and composite works are protected equally with the original work, and the protection of a computer program extends to every kind of program, including operating systems, in any language and form, including source text and object code.