[Ecommerce] From DiMA newletter, webcasters gain European Commission support for piracy of Knowledge Commons

[James Love]

I had not seen this earlier.  Here is the DiMA September newsletter
story bragging about the movement of the European Commission to
support the new webcasting right, which was indeed forthcoming this
week when the EC's Tilman Lueder endorsed the Jukka Liedes proposal
to consider 3 ways to include webcasting in the treaty (yet anther
further EC shift to the US position in the negotiations).   Jamie


http://www.digmedia.org/docs/SEPT051.pdf

International Broadcast Anti-Piracy Treaty Progresses;
Growing Support for Webcast Protection Also
DiMA and EDiMA Help Gain Critical Support from European Commission

Following an appeal from international broadcasters, DiMA and the
U.S. Government, the European Commission (EC) and its member nations
formally supported the scheduling of a World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) diplomatic conference in 2006, to consider
adoption of an international treaty that will promote modernization
of national laws protecting broadcasters against signal piracy. If
approved, the diplomatic conference will explicitly consider
including webcasting as a protected activity, which would be the
first formal international recognition of webcasting as an important
economic, commercial activity.

The European recommendation followed a September 13 meeting in
Brussels of the EC member nations and the governments of the United
States, Japan, Australia, Canada and others, at which DiMA and the
European Digital Media Association (EDiMA) urged the governments to
not only modernize broadcast protections, but to also protect
webcasting if the treaty is to have any relevance in the 21st
century. Despite concerns that the possible inclusion of webcast
protection might trigger Commission opposition of the treaty
generally, this did no occur at the decisive EC meeting.

DiMA Executive Director Jonathan Potter spoke at the Brussels
meeting, and DiMA members that operate in Europe worked in subsequent
days to persuade EC member nation representatives to support
webcasting and the treaty generally. Speaking alongside EDiMA
Executive Director Wes Himes, Potter told approximately 30 nations=92
representatives in Brussels that the best antidote to broadcast and
Internet copyright piracy is a vibrant lawful online media
marketplace, but that this marketplace needs legal protection.

=93Companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, RealNetworks, AOL and telephone
networks annually spend tens of millions of Euros and dollars to
expand their Internet webcast programming and businesses,=94 Potter
said. =93This enormous ongoing investment =85 merits protection. Failure
to legally protect Internet-originated webcasts will distort the
competitive media marketplace in unfair and unjustifiable ways [that
favor traditional media only].=94

Early indications are that WIPO will have one more committee meeting
to discuss the potential treaty in November, and then the Diplomatic
Conference in June 2006.


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James Love, CPTech / www.cptech.org / mailto:james.love@cptech.org /
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / mobile +1.202.361.3040