[A2k] LA Times Opinion piece against the WIPO Broadcasting Treaty

[Robin Gross]

http://opinion.latimes.com/bitplayer/2006/09/do_broadcasters.html


      Do broadcasters need more protection?

Wipo_logo The World Intellectual Property Organization is considering a
new treaty
<http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/sccr/en/sccr_15/sccr_15_2.pdf> that
would provide copyright-like protection to radio stations, TV
broadcasters, cable TV operators and satellite services. These groups,
whose transmissions typically consist of programs already protected by
copyright, want the power to control the recording and retransmission of
their broadcasts. They also want international assurance that if they
use technology to enforce those controls, it will be illegal to
circumvent them.

The proposal is disturbing for several reasons, foremost among them the
absence of a clear rationale. Unlike, say, a film or a book, a broadcast
isn't in and of itself a creative act. The creativity is in the program
being broadcast. (A DJ might argue with me, but until Apple starts
charging 99 cents to read a playlist, I'm sticking to my position.) So
why provide a second layer of intellectual property rights? Local
broadcasters, cable companies and satellite operators should be able to
stop people from stealing their signals or retransmitting them, but
theft-of-services laws should be adequate to address those issues. (Read
a dissent from the National Assn. of Broadcasters here
<http://www.nab.org/images/xertimages/corpcomm/pressrel/090706_DKR_USPTO.pdf>.)
Those companies aren't the ones who should be worried about unauthorized
copying. If someone records "Law & Order" off of KNBC and sells bootlegs
on the street, the victim isn't KNBC, it's the copyright holders, NBC
Universal Television and Wolf Films. Oh sure, proponents of the
broadcast flag argue that broadcasters need the ability to protect their
suppliers' copyrights, or else the studios won't let them put "high
value" content on the air. The main people making that argument, though,
are MPAA lobbyists and studio executives. Hmmmmm.

The anti-circumvention provision of the treaty is troubling, too. It's a
blanket rule, with no limits on the use of electronic locks. The only
assurance it offers for home recording and home networks is this: that
viewers who circumvent an electronic lock for a legal purpose, such as
time-shifting or recording a program in the public domain, would not
infringe the broadcaster's rights. That's a much less useful approach,
from the viewer's standpoint, than requiring that any electronic locks
on a broadcast allow legal uses. But the more useful approach is likely
to be unacceptable to broadcasters, given that the technology used today
isn't sophisticated enough to discern the viewer's intentions. When a
viewer makes a copy, it's really hard to tell whether it's going to be
kept for personal use or sold at the local flea market.

Finally, some WIPO delegates want to extend the treaty to online
simulcasts
<http://www.cptech.org/blogs/wipocastingtreaty/2006/09/wipo-casting-treaty-why-decisions.html>,
that is, transmissions that go simultaneously through the air or cable
wire and the Internet. At least one group -- the U.S.-based Digital
Media Assn. -- wants to include Webcasters as well. Such an expansion
would make a bad proposal worse by giving local broadcasters a way to
assert exclusive rights internationally.

The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights is
scheduled to hammer out a final version of the treaty next week in
Geneva, and the WIPO General Assembly could take it up a few weeks
later. If the treaty is adopted by WIPO, it would still have to be
ratified in the U.S. before it could take effect here. That makes
Congress the last line of defense.