[A2k] OUT-LAW News: Tech companies oppose WIPO treaty on TV rights

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.out-law.com/page-7273


  Tech companies oppose WIPO treaty on TV rights

OUT-LAW News, 07/09/2006


Dell, HP, AT&T, Sony and others have joined forces to oppose a plan that
would give broadcasters a whole new set of intellectual property rights
over television programmes. They will fight to stop the UN proposal
being adopted internationally.

The plan being opposed is a new broadcast treaty from UN agency the
World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Called the Treaty on
the Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organisations, it creates
a new class of IP rights designed to protect broadcasters from the theft
of their TV signals.

"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 and a range of other firms and public bodies. The
protest is being co-ordinated by digital rights activist group the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The treaty is designed to help combat what WIPO says is a growing
problem of cross-border signal piracy, where a channel shown in one
country is re-broadcast in another without permission. Opponents,
including other collections of interest groups such as podcasters and
internet broadcasters, claim that the wording of the treaty may give
broadcasters wide-ranging rights over internet content.

Dean Whitbread is the chairman of the UK Podcasters' Association. "We
don't mind regulation, we just want it to be reasonable," Whitbread
previously told OUT-LAW. "Podcasting and broadcasting are not the same.
I don't think as podcasters we should be subject to the same legislation."

"The current treaty draft includes protection for Internet simulcasts
made by traditional broadcasters and cablecasters, but otherwise
excludes computer networks from its scope," says the protest document
from the EFF coalition. "To the extent that the treaty continues to take
a rights-based approach rather than a signal-theft-based approach, we
oppose the treaty=92s application to the internet."

A WIPO statement regarding the treaty said: "Updating the IP rights of
broadcasters currently provided by the 1961 Rome Convention began at
WIPO in 1997. A growing signal piracy problem in many parts of the
world, including piracy of digitised pre-broadcast signals, has made
this need more acute."

The latest draft of the treaty will be considered at a WIPO meeting in
Geneva next week.