Taking effect on September 1, Decree 287 establishes clear rules and an open framework. This shift challenges art organizations to step out of state-subsidy comfort zones to navigate market dynamics, while artists must learn to manage their intellectual property as true owners.

For decades, public arts organizations were bound by a rigid financial cycle: receive state budget funding, produce a show for official evaluation, and archive it in storage. Attracting private capital (socialization) for major productions frequently stalled due to incompatible compensation mechanisms between public funds and private investment.

Decree 287 removes this barrier by allowing flexible royalty payment methods: lump-sum payments, per-performance payments, periodic payments, or terms fully agreed upon by involved parties.

The provisions allowing negotiated terms and recurring payments replace the previous one-size-fits-all approach and enable successful works to generate continuous income.

A strong script performed 100 times, for example, could now provide its author with royalties from all 100 performances instead of a single lump-sum payment received when the script was first sold.

The performing arts, therefore, can begin operating more like a genuine cultural industry, where artistic quality drives revenue and revenue, in turn, finances new creative work.

Tong Toan Thang, director of the Vietnam Circus Federation, recalled that China had addressed this issue more than a decade ago through a clear national strategy.

He said the Chinese government invested in infrastructure across cities and required each locality to develop a signature performance capable of attracting tourists. Authorities allocated substantial budgets to invite renowned directors, including Zhang Yimou, to produce large-scale shows.

According to Thang, that strategy helped create world-class productions capable of drawing audiences from around the world.

New regulations require new mindsets

To safeguard artists' rights at the root, Decree 287 aligns with the amended Law on Intellectual Property, explicitly defining royalty distribution among four entities: authors, work owners, performers, and related-rights holders.

Lawyer Hoang Ha (HCMC Bar Association), said practical implementation of Decree 287 requires avoiding the practice of lumping all creative contributions into a generic "royalty" pool. A single artistic work contains author rights, work owner rights, performer rights, and related rights. Each party has distinct legal grounds and compensation scopes.

"Having royalties is a step forward, but determining who owns the money, which right generates it, and at what stage it gets paid is paramount. Without clear contractual definitions when a work is rebroadcast on television, uploaded to digital platforms, adapted, or commercially exploited, disputes will still arise," Ha observed.

He said that contracts from now on need to go beyond recording a lump-sum remuneration. It is necessary to specifically determine the rights to be transferred, scope of use, duration, territory, exploitation platform, adaptation rights, re-licensing, how to determine revenue, profit, and the mechanism for checking figures.

Lawyer Hoang Ha also noted that the incentive royalty when exploiting for profit should not be understood as the creator becoming a "shareholder" in the legal sense. This is an economic benefit arising according to the mechanism of the Decree and the agreement between the parties, not changing the capital ownership or legal status in the exploiting unit.

"Upfront transparency regarding rights determines whether Decree 287 genuinely protects creators or merely acts as a new fee schedule," Ha said.

What is worrying is that the policy has changed but the implementation is still operating under the old mindset, he said. If royalties have been raised, the benefit mechanism has been expanded. But budgeting still goes through many layers of approval, payment is still slow, proof documents are complex, exploitation profits are not made public, and each payment has to go through a lengthy process, so the actual benefit to creators will be significantly reduced.

For creative labor, value lies not only in the final amount received but also in the ability to predict benefits and when they will be received. A good director, screenwriter, or artist can hardly feel secure participating in a state project if they know they have rights but don't know when they will be paid, how revenue is calculated, or have to spend many months completing procedures.

Therefore, lawyer Hoang Ha believes that along with the new royalty level, it is necessary to innovate the mechanism of budgeting, acceptance, accounting, finalization, and payment. If the "new spending level" still has to go through the "old process," it will be very difficult to expect the policy to be competitive enough with the private sector in attracting and retaining creative talent.

Tinh Le