[Ecommerce] Draft report of the 13th WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights out

Tue Apr 11 09:11:05 2006

Here are the links to the draft report of the 13th WIPO Standing
Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) which took
place last November (21-23 2005) in English, French and Spanish. In
English the document is 88 pages. Here are excerpts from the last page
or so of the report.

Thiru Balasubramaniam

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*SCCR/13/6 PROV

http://www.wipo.int/meetings/fr/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=3D59092
*
http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_13/sccr_13_6_prov.doc
http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_13/sccr_13_6_prov.pdf

http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/fr/sccr_13/sccr_13_6_prov.doc
http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/fr/sccr_13/sccr_13_6_prov.pdf

http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/es/sccr_13/sccr_13_6_prov.doc
http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/es/sccr_13/sccr_13_6_prov.pdf

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<SNIP>

197. The Delegation of Morocco underlined that the General Assembly had
given the Committee a mandate to hold two sessions to accelerate the
work. It wondered if the committee had the right to propose more than
two sessions since that would contradict the decision of the General
Assembly.

198. The Secretariat stressed that after the proposals that were put
forward by Brazil and by Chile and the lengthy discussions on the
treaty, additional time was needed. It was looking at possible dates
before the Standing Committee session scheduled for June the 19th to the
23rd and informed the Committee that maybe there would be a possibility
in April. It underlined that the General Assembly in September had asked
the Committee to expedite the work. To do so, an additional meeting that
could be held in April would be needed, and it would only deal with the
broadcast treaty.

<SNIP>

205. The Delegation of the United States of America pointed out that
there had been certain misrepresentations made during the discussions
about the law of its country. It has been said that there was no law
granting protection to webcasters. The Delegation stated that the
Copyright Law of its country provided a technologically neutral set of
exclusive rights applicable to all Internet transactions involving
copyrighted works and sound recording and that webcasters enjoyed such
copyright protection like any other copyright holder. Extensive
provisions were contained in the criminal law on unauthorized access to
computer systems, unauthorized interception of computer transmissions,
and their re-use. The broadcasting legislation provided extensive
protection to broadcasters in the United States of America. The question
was how to deal with that within the intellectual property system and
whether some adjustments to those rights were needed to meet the needs
of webcasters who make works available to the public, for the benefit of
the public, and how to proceed with that in the future. The Delegation
had consulted widely within its country on the development of its
proposal, and it would consult further on a treaty text in a basic
proposal when that would become available. It would certainly be
circulated for public comments and those comments would all be taken
into account in formulating the position that the United States of
America would carry to the diplomatic conference when it ultimately was
scheduled.

206. The Delegation of India asked the Chair to provide clarifications
on the next steps of the work of the committee, whether one or more
meetings would be organized in 2006 and what would be the strategy or
the approach for the next two meetings of the SCCR. It noted that there
had been several areas in which different countries had taken different
positions, which apparently seemed to be on two different extremes. At
the same time, there has been considerable unanimity of views and a lot
of consensus on certain principles. Article 3(0) indicating that the
objective of the treaty was to focus on the protection of signals could
be considered as one of the areas of consensus that had emerged. The
second one was that the protection could perhaps be focused against
piracy and maybe to some extent against competing organizations. Most of
the countries had absolutely no difficulty in accepting the proposition
that the protection should be aimed against piracy. The protection was
not aimed against copyright and related rights holders, nor against
limitations and exceptions in favor of public interests. Those broad
areas of consensus could perhaps form the basis for the next round of
discussions and also for the next text that might be required for
further consideration and discussion. Perhaps before meeting in April or
in June the existing text should be examined, including the additional
proposal, to test them out against the principles on which there was
common consensus, in order to arrive at a new text for further
consideration. Lastly, an important part of the discussion on the scope
was whether webcasting and simulcasting should be included. The
Delegation asked the Chair to offer some conclusions as to how to deal
with that issue in the future course of action and how he would like to
proceed further.

207. The Chair indicated that there were many possibilities to design
the next steps of the work of the Standing Committee. At least the first
of the two meetings would be necessary to have a full debate on the new
proposals and on other proposals that could be submitted. The way to
organize the debate and discussions would depend on the availability of
time. For a meeting that could take place in April, another working
paper dealing with some of the issues that seemed to be of interest to
the delegations could be prepared without replacing the Consolidated
Text and the Working Paper. For the June meeting a new set of working
documents could also be produced to facilitate the work. He left the
decision to the Delegations and underlined that, if a lot of work would
not be done before April, due to time constraints, no new documents
would be available in June. He asked whether some documents should be
prepared for the meeting in April or they should be postponed until
after another round of discussion in April.

208. The Delegation of Brazil recognized that work on the text basis had
become less easy as it had been before. However a fair treatment of the
proposals was required and recognition of areas of broad support should
also be reflected. There was a broad support or at least there was no
opposition to the basic concept in these proposals. Additional proposals
made during that meeting should become elements to be integrated into a
third Revised Consolidated Text that would have to be produced at a
certain point in time. The Delegation was in favor of confiding in the
Chair to do that particular job, in order to have a working text to be
considered in the next meeting.

209. The Delegation of the United States of America stated that the
purpose of the next meeting should be to have a real discussion of the
new proposals that deserved a much more detailed discussion. It had
objections to one proposal in its present state and to some of its
features and it would be entirely premature to start the process of
revising that text until delegations had had an opportunity to further
address those proposals and to see in which direction they might lead.

210. The Chair replied that if the meeting in April would be dedicated
to discuss the new proposals, no new working document could be prepared
for the meeting in June. Technically it would be quite impossible since
there would be less than two months between those meetings.

211. The Delegation of Argentina mentioned that two points were
fundamental principles in all negotiations: equal treatment of all
proposals tabled; and any agreement was incomplete until all of the
issues had been examined. An equal treatment to everything that was not
agreed on should be given and all the proposals where no consensus had
been reached should be taken out of the text, or the divergence should
be put in brackets even in the proposals already incorporated. It noted
that because of time constraint it would not be possible to have the
Consolidated Text as early as June.

212. The Secretariat informed the Committee that the proposal of Chile
was available in three languages: English, French and Spanish.

213. The Delegation of Brazil supported the intervention made by the
Delegation of Argentina. Its suggestion to include Brazil=92s and Chile=92s
proposals into another continued Revised Consolidated Text was a
constructive solution to fulfil the mandate received from the General
Assembly. The objective of the meetings was to finalize a basic proposal
for a treaty that would enable the 2006 WIPO General Assembly to
recommend the convening of a diplomatic conference. The revision of the
Consolidated Text did not prejudice any country=92s position on anything.
The Delegation had proposed to delete some articles in the Consolidated
Text that were still reflected in the text, for example the article on
the technological protection measures. However, it would not appropriate
to delete that Article. There may be opposition to certain elements of
the text, but the various positions should be integrated into it, since
it was only a means of consolidating in a single document proposals that
had been made, for ease of reference and use and to support an ongoing
and productive debate. Therefore, it would be fair and procedurally
correct to incorporate into a revised version the proposals from Brazil
and Chile.

214. The Chair suggested that a partial or a complete consolidation of
the text would continue to be done. A third Consolidated Text would be
made available to the delegations as soon as technically possible. In
both cases, explanations on the methods of consolidation would be
provided in the document itself especially if a total consolidation had
not been possible. It would also be explained during the presentation of
the text to the delegations at the next meeting. The Chair underlined
the enormous progress made in a good atmosphere and the high quality
level of the debates and closed the Session.