Outcome Shaky in WIPO Panel’s Last Go at Broadcast Treaty
Consensus was elusive on the latest version of a treaty updating broadcasting protections as the second and final meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) opened Monday in Geneva. The April 20 “non-paper” continues to stir debate over whether the treaty merely protects broadcasters and cablecasters from signal theft or widens copyright protections. It remains to be seen if this week’s meeting can narrow the gap enough that a diplomatic conference can occur later this year, said Electronic Frontier Foundation Finland board member Ville Oksanen.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
The document, by SCCR Chairman Jukka Liedes, tries to “lend full recognition” to a signal-based approach, Oksanen wrote (CD May 3 p7). But in current form it gives broadcasters exclusive rights over retransmission and deferred transmission by any means to the public of fixed broadcasts. Liedes calls that coverage the narrowest meaningful protection for broadcasting organizations.
Most delegations seem ready to discuss details of the draft, said Heijo Ruijsenaars, copyright legal advisor for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). But this meeting simply will “set the pace” for a diplomatic convention at which real talks occur, he said. It gives the delegations a chance to gauge one another’s flexibility on the issues and to try to reach accord enough for a diplomatic conference, he said. The EBU sees the draft as a possible basis for a text for government-level negotiation, but only just, said Ruijsenaars. If scaled back at all, the proposal will not be worth taking to a diplomatic conference, he said.
Internet service providers, civil rights and consumer advocates and some nations believe the current draft would create additional intellectual property rights for broadcast content. In comments filed over the weekend, Canada called “highly debatable” Liedes’ assertion that “the treaty would in no instance affect public interest, access to information, consumer interests or technology innovation.” It wants parties that did not give broadcasters a right to authorize simultaneous retransmission immediately before joining the treaty to be able to opt out of the simultaneous retransmission right for unencrypted broadcasts under certain conditions.
The draft treaty is signal-based, Ruijsenaars said. It must, however, clarify that it does addresses not content, now protected by copyright law, but only neighboring rights, he said. The concept of neighboring rights is less well known in the U.S. than in Europe, he said, which makes it more difficult for U.S. broadcasters to explain the difference between content and signal protection.
Monday’s discussion was “rather critical” of the treaty and the discussion paper, partly because few nations that favor the convention have taken the floor, Oksanen said. Thiru Balasubramaniam, Geneva representative of Knowledge Ecology International, complained that Liedes seems to want to have talks in a closed, “green-room” process.