[A2k] WIPO Broadcasting Treaty SCCR 15, Days 1 and 2 notes

[Gwen Hinze]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Notes taken by EFF (Gwen Hinze) and CP Tech (Thiru Balasubramaniam)
from SCCR 15 Days one and two currently posted at Deeplinks blog.
(Cross posting to Casters' Treaty blog shortly)

<http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004903.php>

My take:

Blogging WIPO: Broadcast Treaty Zooming Ahead

September 13, 2006

The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is
meeting this week in Geneva to discuss and "finalize" the proposed
Broadcasting Treaty. WIPO's goal is to get the 182 Member States to
make a recommendation to the upcoming General Assembly that it should
convene an early 2007 Diplomatic Conference, where the nuts and bolts
of the treaty would be hammered out. Stakes are high. This will be
the third time that the treaty has been put forward for a vote on
holding a Diplomatic Conference. At the end of day 2, it looks like
they might get their wish. The only question is at what cost?

Meeting organizers have deployed what can only be described as
extraordinary measures. There's clear disagreement on four issues;
inclusion of technological protection measures, Internet
retransmission rights, exceptions and limitations and whether the
treaty's scope should be limited to signal protection. Everyone knows
this. Despite that, there's been surprisingly little discussion on
substance. The Chair has given lengthy monologues about clarifying
"misunderstandings" about technological protection measures and the
need for Internet retransmission rights - the Genevois version of a
filibuster - and then announced that there's no more time for
statements; we've had one evening session, and the last two days have
been spent in what he has termed "simul consultation", meaning the
day has been fractured into publicly recorded plenary sessions, and
private "informal" consultations amongst Member States and the Chair.

EFF, other public interest non governmental organizations, and U.S.
industry groups who have joined together in opposing the treaty's
overbroad rights-based approach are all here, talking to member
country delegations, but have not been given an opportunity to speak.
EFF is distributing an open letter signed by over 200 podcasters and
podcasting organizations, a key part of the Internet community that
will be detrimentally impacted by the treaty but has not been
consulted. It is disconcerting that there seems to be such little
understanding of Internet technologies and the significant policy
implications of the treaty for the future of innovation and online
communication.

Discussions began to accelerate yesterday afternoon, as one after
another country expressed support for holding a Diplomatic Conference
in 2007: the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, the Africa
Group, Morocco, Kenya, Benin, Egypt. Last night the Chair laid out
his End Game Plan. He will draft a report overnight with what sounded
like a recommendation to the General Assembly that it should convene
a 2007 Diplomatic Conference and "drafting instructions" for the new
treaty text to be prepared by the next SCCR meeting in November. He
suggested that that would include TPMs, broad Internet retransmission
rights, alternative formulations of the contentious post-fixation
rights, and new definitions of "signal" and "broadcast". The
recommendation will be distributed this morning - the final day - and
Member States will be given an opportunity to comment. But the
contentious issues are already well known: TPMs (opposed by Brazil,
the Asia Group and Iran, concerns expressed by South Africa and the
Africa Group amongst others), Internet retransmission rights and term.

In the Chair's mind though, it appears to be a done deal. He finished
by telling us all about the three week Diplomatic Conference, It is a
"civil kind of battle of intellects". "Constructive ambiguity" will
be useful. "The Diplomatic Conference engenders friendship. Then many
years later you see the people you have been fighting with, and it is
like meeting your family. You hug and kiss! In the end there is a
treaty adopted by consensus."

And this is how we make international information technology policy.

Full details are in EFF and CP Tech's notes of days 1 and 2, following.

Cross-blogged at EFF Deeplinks and CP Tech's Casting Treaty blog.

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Gwen Hinze
International Affairs Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Email:gwen@eff.org
Tel.: + 1 415 436 9333 x110

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