[Random-bits] WIPO deliberations on "casting" treaty

[James Love]

Monday's meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related 
Rights (SCCR).

James Love <james.love@cptech.org> +41.79.566.0475

I am in Geneva attending 3 days of meetings at WIPO, mostly focused on 
the proposed treaty on Broad/cable/web/casting.   The treaty seeks to 
expand and extend a "related right" for casting organizations, that 
would exist independent of copyright, and extend to areas where is there 
no copyright in the underlying information, or where the casting 
organization did not have authorization from copyright owners to manage 
or restrict access to information created by others.  (see 
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/wipo-casting.html).

I am part of a very large delegation from the Civil Society Coalition 
(CSC), which registered a dozen members for the meeting, of whom eleven 
are here in Geneva.

The day began with an informational session on the problems facing the 
blind, and in particular, the proposals by organizations for the 
visually impaired to have global exceptions to copyrights in order to 
reverse engineer work, and create products such as Braille, large type, 
or audio performances of works, and to have the ability to export such 
works across borders, including via the Internet.   The publishers 
opposed these efforts.

At 1 pm the South Centre held a briefing for several developing country 
WIPO delegates on the importance of new open collaborative efforts to 
create public goods.  CPTech worked with the South Centre on the event. 
  The speakers included Sir John Sulton, last year's winner of the Nobel 
prize for Medicine (the Human Genome Project and open life sciences), 
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (Free Libre Open Source Software), Darius Cuplinskas 
from the Open Society Institute (Open Access Journals) and Cory Doctorow 
(Importance of open standards for the Internet and for innovation).


At 3 pm, the SCCR meeting formally began, with a discussion of the 
proposed treaty on broadcasting, cablecasting and webcasting.  The chair 
began with a review of the history of discussions, which began in 1997. 
  The treaty was described as an "updating" of the TRIPS and Rome 
Convention provisions on broadcasting, but it clearly was going much 
further, extending the term of protection from 20 to 50 years, expanding 
the covered platforms (including in some proposals all computer 
networks), and creating a host of new rights and national enforcement 
obligations.

The meeting began with a number of comments by national governments, 
many urging the SCCR to find a way to move forward to a diplomatic 
convention in 2005.  The majority of delegations who spoke did not want 
webcasting included in the new treaty.  The US clearly did.

Senegal asked that a committee be set up to draft a proposed treaty.

The US said that it was trying to balance the needs of right owners, and 
the legitimate interests of consumers, while providing new protections 
against "misappropriation."  In the discussion on the scope of covered 
material, the US made a surprising and welcome (by CPTech and other CSC 
NGOs) intervention, saying that the definition of the scope of material 
was possibly too broad, and that this should be worked on, to make sure 
that it did not cover materials on ordinary web pages.

Russia was one of several countries supporting a wide array of new 
commercial rights for "casting" organization.

Australia was one of several countries opposing the extension of the 
treaty to the Internet, referring to some Internet webcasters as a 
"motley lot."   More importantly, apparently in Australia, courts have 
recently held that a "single frame" constitutes a broadcast, 
illustrating how difficult it will be to limit the scope of covered 
materials.

Canada called for a scaling back of the treaty to deal mostly with 
anti-piracy of broadcasting, and avoiding new content management rights 
for broadcasting organizations.

China expressed concern over webcasting provisions, saying the 
technology was not mature enough for inclusion in this treaty, and 
proposing a separate regulation be considered at a later date.  I 
believe that China made a comment about the rights extending to groups 
who were not the original right owners, and comparing casting 
organizations to "users," but I'm not confident my notes are correct on 
this.

Kenya proposed a long list of technical changes in the proposed treaty, 
including a proposal that the 50 year term of protection would begin 
after the last (rather than the first) broadcast.  Kenya also proposed 
elimination of formalities, making this an "accidental" rights such as 
copyright (term coined by James Boyle and others), where rights are 
automatic, creating burdens on the public to secure rights, even when no 
right was ever desired in the first place.

Today NGOs may be allowed to speak.  There are dozens of industry and 
right-owners NGOs, plus one library NGO and the CSC.  If given the 
opportunity, I  will talk about the inappropriate use of a 50 year term 
of protection for a right based up investment, the scope of content 
covered (to exclude coverage of text, data, software and more generally 
public domain materials),  and the dangers of applying this right to the 
Internet.



-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:james.love@cptech.org
tel. +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040