[Random-bits] "by any means" -- WIPO poised to impose new fees on Internet transmissions of TV programs

[James Love]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/by-any-means-wipo- 
po_b_53109.html
James Love
The Huffington Post
June 21, 2007

"by any means" -- WIPO poised to impose new fees on Internet  
transmissions of TV programs

I'm in Geneva at a meeting of World Intellectual Property  
Organization (WIPO), where negotiators have one final day to finish a  
draft text for a new treaty on "broadcasting." The main demanders of  
the treaty are the owners of television stations, such as the U.S.  
based National Broadcasters Association (NBA) and the Association of  
Commercial Television in Europe (ACT), and their counterparts in  
Asia, Latin America and Africa. There is also a strong push for the  
treaty by companies like Time Warner, News Corp, Disney, and Vivendi,  
which aggregate programs into "channels." (See a partial list here).

The proposed treaty, which is opposed by a coalition of civil society  
NGOs and library groups, seeks to impose broad new intellectual  
property rights to companies that broadcast third party content over  
wireless or cable television networks.

Last evening, the United States delegation told negotiators that the  
new rights be must be extended to deferred broadcasts to the public,  
"by any means." This wording is specifically intended to impose new  
liabilities on the reuse of program on the Internet.

Big losers in this negotiation so far are the growing number of web  
sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Myspace, etc, that feature access to  
clips from television programs, including political content such as  
presidential debates or news shows, that are recorded from television  
(including cable or satellite) and shown, often as excerpts, on the  
Internet.

The new intellectual property right is given to the companies that  
broadcast the content, not the owners of the copyright in the  
programs themselves. The broadcaster's new exclusive rights are  
modeled after (but expanded from) the 1961 Rome Convention's  
broadcaster's right - a treaty the United States never signed. The  
owners of the TV or cable systems, or even the cable channels, like  
HBO, FX, TBS, the Discovery Channel, or Spike TV, can assert the  
right, and demand injunctions or fees when works are used on the  
Internet, even when the copyright owner itself does not take any  
action against the Internet use of the work, or the work is in the  
public domain under copyright law.

The US delegation is taking positions that are contrary to U.S. law,  
opposed by many leading U.S, technology firms, like Intel, Dell  
Computers, A&T and Verizon, library and consumer rights groups (see  
details here and here) but also the positions of Senators Leahy and  
Specter, who have called on the U.S. negotiators to oppose the  
treaty, if it provided intellectual property rights to the  
broadcasters, for merely transmitting works.

Making matters worse, the U.S. government and the European Commission  
are taking a hard line against various proposes to include  
protections for measures that protect use for education, the need to  
promote access to knowledge and information and national educational  
and scientific objectives, or which give governments more flexibility  
to "curb anti-competitive practices, and to promote the public  
interest in sectors of vital importance to its socio-economic,  
scientific and technological development." The US government is also  
opposing language acknowledging the right of governments to protect  
"cultural diversity."

----------------------------------------------
James Packard Love
Knowledge Ecology International
mailto:james.love@keionline.org
tel. +1.202.332.2670 / U.S. mobile+1.202.361.3040, Geneva mobile  
+41.76.413.6584

"If everyone thinks the same: No one thinks." Bill Walton"