[A2k] Financial Times: Piracy collapses broadcasting treaty

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/71ed85da-225e-11dc-ac53-000b5df10621.html

Piracy collapses broadcasting treaty

By Frances Williams in Geneva

Published: June 24 2007 17:21 | Last updated: June 24 2007 17:21

A 10-year effort to negotiate an international treaty updating
broadcasters=92 rights for the digital age has run aground, with little
prospect of rescue in the foreseeable future.

Member states of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, meeting
in Geneva, decided at the end of last week not to set a date for
concluding a pact after it became clear that governments were still
hopelessly split on how much protection from piracy broadcasters should
be given.

=93There was no agreement on any of the fundamental issues of the
treaty,=94 Paul Salmon, head of the US delegation, said.

International rules to protect television broadcasts have not been
updated since the 1961 Rome convention, drafted at a time when cable
was in its infancy and the internet not even invented.

Now that perfect digital copies of television programmes can be made
and transmitted with a few mouse clicks, signal theft has become a big
commercial headache for broadcasting organisations around the world.

However, developing countries in Latin America and Asia, led by Brazil
and India, have opposed the push by European and African governments
for broad new rights that would protect television programmes from
unauthorised retransmission for up to 50 years.

Critics say the proposed new rights would overlay existing copyrights,
restrict access to programme content that is now in the public domain,
prevent legitimate private copying for personal use, and stifle
technological innovation.

The US voice, which could have proved influential, has been largely
absent from the latest debate, as technology and communications
companies such as Intel and Verizon have made clear their opposition to
the stronger rights favoured by the majority of US broadcasters.

European television companies, which already enjoy stronger protection
at home than the Rome convention provides, say they may now give up on
Wipo and see what they can get in bilateral and regional agreements.

=93If Wipo is not the right forum for this issue to be addressed then
broadcasters will need to raise [their] concerns at regional or
bilateral level instead,=94 said Tom Rivers, external legal adviser to
the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT).

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@keionline.org