WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Talks Off To Slow Start As Opponents Grow 02/05/2006 by William New, Intellectual Property Watch Leave a Comment Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)On the second day of a weeklong meeting at World Intellectual Property Organization on copyright issues, there is little indication so far whether member governments will recommend the full negotiation of a treaty boosting the protection of broadcasts, according to participants. At stake in the 1-5 May meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights is the future of a treaty, years in the making, which would strengthen the rights of broadcasters. The argument has been made that broadcasting organisations need additional tools to fight signal piracy. This week’s committee meeting is tasked with deciding whether to recommend to the September WIPO General Assembly that a full WIPO negotiation, known as a diplomatic conference, be undertaken. The slow start appears to have many stakeholders chafing, as a wide variety of non-governmental and industry participants are poised to register concerns with the latest draft text of the treaty, known as the “basic proposal.” But before they could speak, all participants were asked to listen to two professors opine on the issue. These were André Lucas of the University of Nantes Law School, and Delia Lipszyc, a copyright professor at the University of Buenos Aires Law School and president of the Interamerican Copyright Institute. Broadcasters do not typically take ownership of the rights of the broadcasts they transmit. The treaty states that protection would only extend to the signals used for transmissions, and not to material carried by the signals. The draft proposal also states that the treaty would “in no way” affect the protection of copyright or related rights in program material that is broadcast, nor would it impact existing obligations countries already have under other treaties. Cablecasters would also be provided protection under the treaty. Whether the treaty will extend to webcasting, broadcasts over the Internet, is a primary topic of concern. Article 6 of the treaty states, “Broadcasting organizations shall enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing the retransmission of their broadcasts by any means, including rebroadcasting, retransmission by wire, and retransmission over computer networks.” A highly unpopular proposal by the United States to include webcasting in the treaty ended up as a “non-mandatory appendix” to the treaty. A key term under scrutiny is “fixation,” which is the capture and later rebroadcast of transmissions. The treaty would give the organisations the exclusive right of authorizing the fixation of their broadcasts, as well as of authorising any type of reproduction of their broadcasts. This includes transmission over computer networks, and wired or wireless, and the right is not exhausted even if the broadcast was public. Questions are being raised about the meaning of phrases referring to authorisation and the prohibition of broadcasts from unauthorised fixations. The draft also requires governments to provide “adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures” used by broadcasters, and restrict unauthorised acts. Further articles establish obligations to ensure the presence of “rights management information,” or identification of the broadcaster and the terms of use of the broadcast. Under the draft, broadcasters would get protection for 50 years from the year the broadcast took place. Treaty Opposition Grows A number of old and new stakeholders have appeared at this week’s meeting to voice their concern about aspects of the proposed treaty. Many seem to have as a primary purpose to ensure the limitation of the focus of the treaty to signals. A group of non-governmental organisations has issued updated recommendations on the proposal, and raises “serious reservations.” The NGOs include the Consumer Project on Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Information for Libraries, International Music Managers Forum, IP Justice, Open Knowledge Forum, and Public Knowledge. The NGOs call for further clarity on the signal as the sole object of protection, a redefinition of fixation to exclude programme content, and removing provisions related to technical protection measures. The group also suggests changing the text to explicitly exclude transmissions over computer networks. The Civil Society Coalition, with some of the same NGO members, raised significant concerns about the creation of a new layer of untested rights. The groups said the draft treaty “does not effectively address protection against signal piracy but grants broad exclusive rights to transmitters regardless of their actual needs.” The coalition also said the treaty’s silence on non-protected subject matter such as knowledge in the public domain could lead to abuses, and said the provisions on exclusive rights to authorize transmissions “gives rise to a potential logjam of overlapping rights and conflicts.” The groups said the current treaty would require a third party to seek permission from the broadcaster, cablecaster or webcaster even if a rights holder authorised the broadcast of the program material. The impact on the public domain would be the “deleterious effect of locking up works and subject matter in the public domain for 50 years,” an increase from 20 years, it said. The coalition said the draft treaty contains fewer exceptions to its terms than other WIPO treaties. US Tech Industry Joins Opposition Fairly new to the debate and deadset against the current draft is the US telecommunications industry, which plans to recommend several changes to the text. “As currently drafted, the treaty would have a profound chilling effect on the free flow of information over the Internet,” the US Telecom Association said in a statement. The group said that a treaty that began as an effort to address broadcast signal theft “unfortunately does not mention signal theft.” Instead, they said, “the broad rights granted under the treaty may have unintended consequences on the growth of broadband [high-speed Internet access] and the Internet.” The telcommunications industry group suggested changes to: limit the treaty to signal theft, delete the webcasting portion, permit transmissions within the home, and ensure intermediary carriers are not made liable. Verizon is among the companies represented at the meeting. Also coming out against the current draft is Intel Corporation, which circulated a statement calling for the abandonment of the treaty and declaring that it would grant “new legal rights to control uses of content that they broadcast – rights that are separate from and in addition to any existing copyright rights in the content.” Furthermore, it said, “adopting countries can choose to extend these new rights to webcast content in addition to traditional broadcast content.” Intel opposes the treaty because “proponents have not demonstrated that the benefits of creating new exclusive rights outweigh the burdens that these new rights impose.” The burdens cited include: control of mobile device and digital home innovation, technical protection measures, liability risk for software makers, device makers and Internet service providers, more complexity to the clearance process for using content, harm to copyright owners, and harm to the public interest. A wide-ranging group of NGOs from Chile issued a statement raising concerns about the treaty and about the insufficient exceptions and limitations. The Chilean government has been a leader in the push for exceptions and limitations. European Digital Rights, which represents 21 privacy and civil rights organizations, also issued a statement of concern about exceptions and limitations. The International Federation of Journalists has issued a statement raising concerns about the inclusion of webcasting, which is says is still evolving and unregulated. Their broader concern is over the preservation of the rights of authors over their work. The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) offered a statement on the relationship between the proposed treaty and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s recently adopted convention on cultural diversity. A broadcasting industry source commented that now that the treaty may be moving toward a full negotiation, a number of new opponents have arrived late on the scene out of “a fear of the unknown.” Such opponents lack understanding of the issues but have come more out of a general concern that something might affect them negatively, the source said. Opponents also are trying to negotiate the full treaty in committee, rather than leaving that for the WIPO diplomatic conference. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Related "WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Talks Off To Slow Start As Opponents Grow" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.