[A2k] OUT-LAW News: Broadcast treaty needs sounding out, says WIPO

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.out-law.com/page-7357


<>Broadcast treaty needs sounding out, says WIPO<>

OUT-LAW News, 04/10/2006

A controversial broadcast copyright treaty opposed by podcasters and
internet broadcasters has been dealt a blow by the General Assembly of
the body behind it.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)'s ruling body, the
General Assembly, has rejected a proposal by a copyright committee to
send the proposal straight to a conference to be finalised. The proposal
must be approved by two more meetings before it can be the subject of an
approving diplomatic conference, the General Assembly ruled.

If passed as it currently stands the treaty would create brand new
intellectual property (IP) rights in television broadcasts. Designed to
prevent the international pirating of TV signals, it has attracted the
ire of internet broadcasters who say that it extends WIPO regulation to
the internet. WIPO says that a new treaty is needed to replace the
currently active decades-old one, the 1961 Rome Convention.

The copyright committee of WIPO, the Standing Committee on Copyrights
and Related Rights, had proposed that the treaty progress straight to a
diplomatic conference next summer, which would be the forum for its
adoption by WIPO.

The Assembly, though, noted that there was not a significant enough
consensus among member states and said that the treaty must be the
subject of two meetings in 2007 to attempt to achieve consensus. India,
the US and Brazil had objected to the treaty being progressed
immediately to a conference.

"A diplomatic conference is now contingent upon member states reaching
consensus where there are currently great differences such as the
inclusion of anti-circumvention measures in the treaty and outlawing
Internet retransmissions of programs,=94 said Robin Gross, executive
director of IP Justice, a civil liberties IP law pressure group which
addressed the General Assembly.

=93While proponents of the Broadcast Treaty hail this as a victory, since
a diplomatic conference may still be convened next year, the General
Assembly=92s refusal to rubber-stamp the decision of the SCCR Chairman is
the real victory at WIPO," said Gross.

The proposed treaty creates a new right in the content of broadcasts for
broadcasters, even if the creator of the content is a third party. Some
content creators and legal experts have warned that this means that
creators will not be permanently in control of content to which they
currently have the principal rights.

"This is a right just for transmitting something, and it exists on top
of the existing copyright [in the broadcast]," Rufus Pollock, a director
of the Open Knowledge Foundation and a member of the board of the Open
Rights Group, told OUT-LAW in June.

"You retain the copyright in your material," said James Boyle at the
time. Boyle is a law professor at Duke law School in North Carolina and
founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. "I, the
broadcaster, get a right over any copy or retransmission of my broadcast
(which contains your material). Thus if someone copied your movie from
my broadcast they could infringe both sets of rights."

The proposed treaty has also been opposed by a coalition of technology
companies, including Dell, HP, AT&T and Sony and others. "Creating broad
new intellectual property rights in order to protect broadcast signals
is misguided and unnecessary and risks serious unintended negative
consequences," says a protest document signed by the technology
companies in a campaign co-ordinated by digital rights activist group
the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).