New Text For Proposed WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Now Available

The chair of the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee has issued a new consolidated text on definitions, what should be protected, and the rights to be granted to broadcasters. The text comes in the lead-up to the next meeting of the committee.

The text [pdf], drafted by the chair of by the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), Martin Moscoso of Peru, is expected to be discussed at the next SCCR meeting from 7-11 December.

The SCCR has been working for years on a potential treaty protecting broadcasting organisations. The document was requested at the last session of the SCCR.

The new text lays out several alternatives for consideration by the SCCR. Definitions include definitions of a signal, broadcasting, cablecasting, and retransmission.

Also included in the definition is “near simultaneous retransmission,” which according to the text is “a transmission that is delayed only to the extent necessary to accommodate time differences or to facilitate the technical transmission of the broadcast [/cablecast].”

Countries generally agree on the notion of stopping piracy of broadcast signals, but the subject of protection and what constitutes a broadcasting organisations is heavily debated. Still, at the last session of the SCCR in July, sources said positions were getting closer (IPW, WIPO, 3 July 2015).

In the object of protection, the chair added a note saying that further discussion is needed “on the inclusion as an object of protection of transmission by broadcasting (cablecasting) organizations in such a way that members of the public may access them from a place and a time individually chosen by them.”