A
committee of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)
approved the conference as the medium to finalise a version of the
treaty that will become law. The proposal is WIPO's Treaty on the
Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organisations and it
creates a new class of IP rights designed to protect broadcasters
from the theft of their TV signals.
A coalition of major technology companies including Dell, HP,
Sony and AT&T oppose the Treaty, as do many podcasters, web
broadcasters and digital rights activists. They claim that the
Treaty would give broadcasters too many intellectual property
rights over content.
The Treaty is designed to update WIPO's 1961 Rome Convention on
broadcasting and it is hoped that it will combat international
signal theft, where television from one country is broadcast into
another. Those opposing the treaty argue that it creates yet more
IP rights and hinders the ability of new media producers to control
their rights over content.
The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights has
passed the treaty and allowed it to proceed to a diplomatic
conference. Scheduled for July 2007, the conference must first be
called by the WIPO General Assembly in late September.
The major Silicon Valley names behind the protests against the
treaty produced a document outlining their objections earlier this
month. "Creating broad new intellectual property rights in order to
protect broadcast signals is misguided and unnecessary and risks
serious unintended negative consequences," says the document. The
protest is being co-ordinated by digital rights activist group the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Podcasters and webcasters feel that the treaty could give
broadcasters rights over their content. They claim to have had
reassurances from WIPO that it would not try to regulate them as it
does television but come up with separate rules to cover new
media.
Dean Whitbread is the chairman of the UK Podcasters'
Association. "We don't mind regulation, we just want it to be
reasonable," Whitbread previously told OUT-LAW. "Podcasting and
broadcasting are not the same. I don't think as podcasters we
should be subject to the same legislation."
