MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine artist State-imposed guild monopolies dissolved

“Today we can leave behind 50 years of cultural oppression,” Sturzenegger stressed

Argentina's Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger announced this week the elimination of restrictions on cultural activities dating back to the dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía (1966-1970). The new Presidential Decree issued by Javier Milei will “free Argentine culture from the system of state control established by the Onganía regime 50 years ago,” the minister explained.

“Until now, the State controlled the income of all artists, forcing them to surrender their rights through an organization authorized by the State itself,” Sturzenegger went on while noting that this “perverse system” was deepened under Kirchnerism.

The mechanism allowed governments to have ”control of the rights of artists in order to discipline them (either by privileging them in payment, or by extorting them),“ the chief deregulator pointed out. It also ”constituted a bulging fund in which the saying 'the one who shares keeps the best part' is valid.“

In his view, ”Kirchnerism added hypocrisy“ to the issue ”because while it conditioned artistic creation and took resources from it, it pretended that it wanted to help and promote it.”

Since the Onganía days, collective management societies (SGC), namely SADAIC, SAGAI, AADI-CAPIF, DAC, and ARGENTORES, had a monopoly on the representation of copyrights and on setting the rates for using them. One musician explained in an online posting that he had to have SADAIC allow him to make arrangements to his own compositions.

Musicians staging a concert had to pay SADAIC first and then get repaid to collect their royalties. There will be no more intermediaries for them to get what is theirs, Stuzenegger highlighted.

The Libertarian Government's measure eliminates these monopolies and allows authors and creators to enter into private agreements without the intervention of said societies, thus “collecting their royalties themselves and agreeing the rate with the user,” the minister noted. Thus, “authors recover the freedom that comes from full control of their rights, they will be able to choose who represents them or if they wish to represent themselves without the intervention of” anyone, the official also noted while underscoring the absurdity of having agencies such as SADAIC.

“Today we can leave behind 50 years of cultural oppression,” Sturzenegger further stressed.