WIPO's 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 – 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's 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.
"This 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," 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.
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