[Ecommerce] Casters' treaty is out, please review.

[Manon Ress]

Dear colleagues,

The consolidated text for a WIPO treaty on the protection of
broadcasting organizations is available at:

http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/wipo-casting.html

http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/meetings/2004/sccr/index_11.htm

A quick glance at it:

Article 3 Scope of Application includes 3 alternatives: (E) the EU proposal=
 ie broadcasting organizations that also webcast their brodacast are includ=
ed, (F)the US alternative ie that the treaty applies to webcasting organiza=
tion and (G)the rest of the world's proposal, ie that there is no provision=
 including webcast.

Article 15 Term of Protection
50 years (Singapore proposed 20 years and I hope they insist on it and that=
 other delegations do too since there's NO rational for the 50 years except=
 that "more is better"!)

Then there's the huge issues of the scope of the rights granted to broadcas=
ters (cablecasters and webcasters)....right of retransmission, communicatio=
n to the public, fixation, reproduction, distribution, transmission followi=
ng fixation, making available of fixed broadcasts, protection of signals pr=
ior to broadcasting.

Some of these rights are already in Rome etc but others are not and could b=
e problematic.  It looks like to fix a "signal piracy" problem, we using an=
 IP nuclear weapon?

If you're interested in attending the WIPO meeting in June, let me know.
Manon



--
Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176