[Ecommerce] 3 stories on the Brodacasters' treaty AFP, Reuters and Outlaw.com

[Manon Ress]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Broadcast-discuss] AFP,  Reuters and Outlaw.com on Broadcast
Treaty
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 13:15:28 -0500
From: David Tannenbaum <davidt@public-domain.org>
To: broadcast-discuss@lists.essential.org

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/041122/323/f74vc.html

Monday November 22, 06:00 PM

WIPO sidelines US' bid to include webcasting under copyright protection

  GENEVA (AFX) - Member states of the World Intellectual Property
Organisation (WIPO) have sidelined a US government proposal to extend
copyright protection for television and radio productions to cover
webcasting on the Internet, a WIPO official said today.
  'There had been the proposal by the United States to have webcast
included in the process of updating the broadcast treaty. There was no
support for it,' said WIPO Deputy Director General Rita Hayes.
  The proposal has been opposed by developing countries in the
180-nation global patent and copyright protection body, and campaigners
defending the notion of a copyright-free public domain on the Internet.
  It was effectively put aside last week during long-running talks on
revising the 1961 Rome Convention, which protects intellectual property
rights of performers, record producers, television and radio broadcasters.
  'Even though it was difficult for the US delegation to accept that,
they were willing to look at different flexibilities,' Hayes told
journalists.
  The talks, which have been underway since 1997, could turn to an
optional protocol on the issue instead of the proposal for a universally
binding clause in the Convention, officials said.
  An updated treaty is aimed partly at tackling pirated rebroadcasting
of TV or radio to developing countries.
  Developing countries feared that the US proposal would be too costly
and complex to implement. They could avoid signing up to it under the
alternative proposals.
  A group of Internet freedom of information campaigners, the Union for
the Public Domain, said the treaty could still represent a threat.
  'If there's any language in the treaty which mentions webcasting, it
will set an international norm which could endanger the public domain,'
said UPD coordinator David Tannenbaum.

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=3Dstory&u=3D/nm/20041122/media_nm/media_tre=
aty_dc_3

New Broadcasting Treaty Makes Progress at WIPO

GENEVA (Reuters) -  Negotiators have made progress toward agreeing a new
international treaty on broadcasting, helped by a U.S. concession that
webcasting need not necessarily be included, U.N. officials said on Monday.

  Members of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are
seeking to update the 1961 Rome Convention on the Protection of
Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations,
which has been under discussion at the United Nations (news - web
sites)' body since 1997.

  But many developing countries had been resisting pressure from the
United States, and to a lesser extent the European Union (news - web
sites), to include at least aspects of webcasting in any pact.

  "It was a big move to take it (webcasting) out," said Rita Hayes,
deputy WIPO director-general, who is overseeing the work on the new treaty.

  At the latest closed-door talks, which concluded last Friday, states
agreed to hold regional meetings ahead of the next round of treaty
negotiations scheduled for mid-2005, officials said.

  "We have made progress," Hayes told a news conference.

  But she added it was not certain that one more negotiating session
would be enough for states to call a diplomatic conference, the final
step in the treaty-making process.

  In any case, such a conference appeared unlikely before 2006 at the
earliest because the decision to call one would have to be approved by
WIPO's next general assembly, which will not be held before next autumn,
diplomats noted.

  The need to update the existing treaty, which pre-dates much of modern
television technology, has been made more acute by a growing
signal-piracy problem in many parts of the world.

  Signal piracy, a problem particularly affecting developing countries,
was growing at between 11 and 14 percent a year in Asia, leading to
significant loss of income for broadcasters, Hayes said.

  Piracy is one thing on which states agree on the need to act, with
some developing countries, led by Brazil, Argentina, India and Egypt,
seeking to limit the scope of the treaty largely to that issue.

  Their stance is backed by many activist organizations, which question
whether the broadcasters need any further protection than that already
given them by international copyright and other existing forms of
intellectual property protection.

  The scope of a future treaty, as well as the duration of any
protection granted, are two of the issues still outstanding, U.N.
officials said.

  Some countries want the period of protection limited to 20 years,
while others are pushing for 50.

  Copyright =A9 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication
or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the
prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any
errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.

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http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=3Dbroadcastingtreaty1101117048&=
area=3Dnews

News  Broadcasting treaty will subvert rights of creators, say critics

22/11/2004

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) met last week to
discuss a proposed treaty on the rights of broadcasters. But critics say
the proposals will undermine public interest and subvert the rights of
creators in favour of large broadcasters.

WIPO=92s Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights met in Geneva
last week for further debate on a consolidated text of proposals for the
Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations.

  Work on the text has been continuing since 1998 and does not yet
amount to a draft Treaty. But the proposals submitted so far have
stirred controversy.

One of the main criticisms, from civil liberties group IP Justice,
relates to proposals to prevent consumers from bypassing technology
locks that broadcasting companies place on information and entertainment.

  These controversial provisions, similar to the US Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA), have been shown to harm freedom of expression,
consumer rights, technological innovation, and market competition,
according to IP Justice.

  The group, which participated in the meeting as an observer, says that
current proposals will grant an additional layer of rights for
broadcasters, on top of the rights of copyright holders, to prevent
consumer and scientific circumvention of technology locks on broadcasts.

  If the treaty passes, argues the group, consumers will be unable to
access public domain programming that is locked-up by broadcasting
companies. Furthermore, artists will be required to seek permission from
broadcasting companies if they want to use their own performances.

Brazil and India had requested at the last committee meeting that the
draft allow for the possibility of removing these provisions, but no
option to delete the relevant sections of the treaty was included in its
latest version.

Activists are also concerned that while the treaty purports to "update"
existing laws, in reality, they say, it will create a broad range of new
rights for broadcasters that currently exist nowhere in any national law.

For example, observes IP Justice, the US has proposed that the treaty's
scope be broadened to also control webcasting =96 the broadcasting of
radio over the internet. This would allow traditional broadcasting
companies to squeeze out innovative internet companies, according to the
group.

Over a dozen Member States urged that webcasting be removed from the
scope of the treaty=92s regulation at the last meeting, but the provision,
supported only by the US, remains in the proposals, according to the
activist group.

  The proposal has also been attacked for undermining the goals of the
"Development Agenda," which was adopted by the WIPO General Assembly in
October to shift WIPO's focus away from the expansion of rightsholders'
rights and towards the creation of incentives for allowing access to
knowledge.

  Unfortunately, says IP Justice, WIPO's copyright committee has yet to
heed the calls from developing countries and remains focused on "special
interest" laws such as the proposed Broadcasting Treaty.

"It is not the role of the WIPO Secretariat to tell Member States what
their new laws will be, but rather to facilitate Member States'
expressed will," said IP Justice Executive Director Robin Gross in a
statement to the WIPO copyright committee.

  "Self-determination is an indispensable component of legitimate
democratic law-making processes. Unfortunately, it would appear that the
'tail is wagging the dog' in this case," added Gross.

=94This treaty will confer upon the transmitters of information a host of
'related' or 'pseudo' copyrights that have the potential to trump true
copyright and restrict the flow of information on the internet,=94 said an
open letter presented to the meeting by Cory Doctorow, European Affairs
Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on behalf of 20
technology companies and organisations opposed to the treaty.

The EFF, together with IP Justice, European Digital Rights and other
civil rights groups have presented the Committee with an alternative
draft of the Treaty. This sets out their version of the concepts that
should be used in any international measure covering broadcasts and
broadcasting organisations.

See:

  Revised consolidated draft for a Treaty on the Protection of
Broadcasting Organisations (92-page PDF)

Text of the alternative draft of the Treaty (53-page PDF)

EFF's open letter

The Development Agenda

See also: Broadcasting rights: proposed treaty under fire, OUT-LAW News,
09/06/2004
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--
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, USA
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