[A2k] Los Angeles Times: Proposed Treaty on TV Signals Spurs Criticism

[Jeff Williams]

Thiru and all,

  I believe Sarah is right in her response.


Thiru Balasubramaniam wrote:

> <SNIP>
>
> The coalition boasts major companies such as AT&T Inc., Verizon
> Communications Inc., Intel Corp. and Dell Inc. Verizon acknowledged that
> the treaty could be a help as it rolls out cable TV service, but it
> worries that the company's larger business of Internet access could
> suffer because of potential liability for illegal retransmissions.
>
> "The reason why they want this right =85 is they can get additional money
> out of players they haven't been able to charge before," Sarah Deutsch,
> Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel, said of
> traditional broadcasters. "The whole concept of giving an intellectual
> property right to a signal is ridiculous."
>
> <SNIP>
>
> The proposed treaty has been progressing quietly, but opposition has
> been building in recent months. This spring, a study prepared for
> UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
> Organization, concluded that the proposed treaty "could prevent or
> restrict" the flow of news broadcasts and other information considered
> in the public domain.
>
> <SNIP>
>
> "Thou shalt not steal is something we appreciate and think a treaty
> could be based on that," said Jeff Lawrence, director of global content
> policy for Intel. "We're just uncomfortable with starting to create
> whole new categories of intellectual property rights to potentially
> protect particular business models."
>
> <SNIP>
>
> "It shows an old-fashioned way to look at technology and innovation,"
> said Manon Ress of the Consumer Project on Technology, an international
> organization that focuses on the flow of information.
>
> ----------------
>
> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nutreaty13sep13,1,6505400.story?col=
l=3Dla-mininav-business&ctrack=3D1&cset=3Dtrue
> <http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nutreaty13sep13,1,6505400.story?co=
ll=3Dla-mininav-business&ctrack=3D1&cset=3Dtrue>
>
>   Proposed Treaty on TV Signals Spurs Criticism
>
> By Jim Puzzanghera
> Times Staff Writer
>
> September 13, 2006
>
> WASHINGTON =97 The proposal sounds modest enough: Broadcasters want to
> stop international pirates from hijacking American TV signals and
> re-transmitting them over the Internet.
>
> But the high-tech industry and digital rights advocates see something
> more sinister in the fine print of a proposed international treaty being
> negotiated this week in Geneva. They fear it will end up restricting how
> people can use legally recorded shows stashed on their TiVos or computer
> hard drives.
>
> "When I look at the language of the treaty, I begin to get frightened,"
> said Jim Burger, an attorney who specializes in intellectual property
> issues and represents high-tech companies, including TiVo Inc.
>
> Pushed by U.S. and European TV networks, the treaty being considered by
> a World Intellectual Property Organization committee would prohibit the
> theft of their signals, as well as those from cable and satellite
> broadcasters. TV broadcasters said they were not targeting average
> viewers recording their favorite shows, just large-scale thieves
> stealing their business.
>
> "If you send our signal =85 to 100,000 people so it ruins our ability to
> market our signals, we ought to be able to prohibit that," said Ben
> Ivins, senior associate general counsel for the National Assn. of
> Broadcasters, which has been pressing for the treaty for several years.
>
> But in what is shaping up as the next major battle in the fight over
> digital content, a coalition of phone companies, information technology
> firms and digital rights advocates warn the proposed treaty could do
> much more and is working to derail it.
>
> The treaty's broad language would create an expansive new copyright on
> TV signals that could lead to higher prices and more restrictions on
> home recording. Watching shows on a digital video recorder, transmitting
> a football game to a laptop via services such as SlingBox or simply
> moving video from one device to another in a home network would
> technically be considered a retransmission that requires the
> broadcaster's OK.
>
> Critics say it's another desperate attempt by the broadcast industry to
> use legislation to restrict technological innovation and keep a dying
> business model on life support. The pattern, they say, stretches all the
> way back to the battle over the first Betamax video recorders when the
> industry fought new technology with legislation and lawsuits.
>
> The entertainment industry has sought legislative intervention in the
> face of other technological advances. The advent of the VCR led to a
> suit over time shifting that it ultimately lost before the Supreme Court
> in 1984.
>
> More recently, the creation of digital TV led broadcasters to press
> Congress to require anti-copying technology, called the broadcast flag,
> be embedded in the signal. Congress has resisted. It's also failed to
> take up a push by movie studios for legislation to plug a technological
> hole that allows people to bypass copy protection on DVDs.
>
> Treaty foes said broadcasters could use the new copyright as leverage to
> strike more favorable licensing deals with manufacturers or to force
> them to build in blocking technology, such as preventing a recorded show
> from being burned to a DVD.
>
> "Many believe that the broadcasters see this exclusive right as a way to
> protect an industry that is rapidly being eclipsed by technological
> development," said Matthew Schruers, senior counsel for litigation and
> legislative affairs at the Computer & Communications Industry Assn., an
> industry trade group. "There is a fear that right could prevent the use
> of cool new devices because people can't license them or because the
> broadcasters don't want to license them."
>
> The coalition boasts major companies such as AT&T Inc., Verizon
> Communications Inc., Intel Corp. and Dell Inc. Verizon acknowledged that
> the treaty could be a help as it rolls out cable TV service, but it
> worries that the company's larger business of Internet access could
> suffer because of potential liability for illegal retransmissions.
>
> "The reason why they want this right =85 is they can get additional money
> out of players they haven't been able to charge before," Sarah Deutsch,
> Verizon's vice president and associate general counsel, said of
> traditional broadcasters. "The whole concept of giving an intellectual
> property right to a signal is ridiculous."
>
> Under the proposed treaty, the broadcaster of a TV signal =97 over the ai=
r
> or via satellite or cable =97 would get a 50-year copyright. The right
> would be in addition to the copyright already given to a program's creato=
r.
>
> The retransmission of TV signals is illegal under U.S. law. But many
> countries give stronger protection to broadcast signals under a 1961
> treaty that the U.S. never joined. The World Intellectual Property
> Organization, an agency of the United Nations based in Geneva, has been
> trying to update that treaty for the digital age.
>
> Broadcasters said technological advances had made it easier to steal
> signals, and the Internet is a ready-made distribution network. They
> point to a Canadian company, ICraveTV.com, that hijacked signals from
> four Buffalo, N.Y., stations in 1999 and shipped them to their users. A
> U.S. judge shut down the site for infringing the copyrights on the
> programming.
>
> Broadcasters complain that there's no similar right covering the
> signals, and they're losing advertising revenue because of pirates in
> the Caribbean, Mexico and China. There are no precise dollar figures for
> TV signal piracy in the U.S. But this summer, Envisional Ltd., a British
> Internet monitoring company, estimated each episode of the most popular
> TV shows is downloaded about a million times.
>
> The proposed treaty has been progressing quietly, but opposition has
> been building in recent months. This spring, a study prepared for
> UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
> Organization, concluded that the proposed treaty "could prevent or
> restrict" the flow of news broadcasts and other information considered
> in the public domain.
>
> Opponents of the treaty said broadcasters could accomplish their
> anti-piracy goals with a narrow international pact that simply prohibits
> the theft of TV signals. Their push for more expansive copyright
> protection arouses suspicions.
>
> "Thou shalt not steal is something we appreciate and think a treaty
> could be based on that," said Jeff Lawrence, director of global content
> policy for Intel. "We're just uncomfortable with starting to create
> whole new categories of intellectual property rights to potentially
> protect particular business models."
>
> But broadcasters said they needed the ability not only to stop piracy
> but also to license it to bring in more money abroad.
>
> The U.S. delegation has been pushing for the treaty, along with its
> European counterparts. If the World Intellectual Property Organization
> approves a treaty, it will be effective only in countries that pass
> separate implementing legislation. Broadcasters said Congress could
> limit the treaty's scope in the U.S., adding traditional protections for
> personal use of copyrighted materials, known as fair use.
>
> But treaty opponents said it might be hard to stop the treaty's momentum
> once it was approved internationally. And the ultimate victims may be
> average viewers who find their ability to record TV programs limited or
> more costly because of broadcasters' efforts.
>
> "It shows an old-fashioned way to look at technology and innovation,"
> said Manon Ress of the Consumer Project on Technology, an international
> organization that focuses on the flow of information.
>
> _______________________________________________
> A2k mailing list
> A2k@lists.essential.org
> http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/a2k

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Updated 1/26/04
CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security
IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng.  INEG. INC.
ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
 Registered Email addr with the USPS
Contact Number: 214-244-4827