Broadcast Treaty Still on Agenda But Future Uncertain
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) broadcast treaty is not dead, but Friday its future seemed uncertain. Delegates to the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) met informally for several nights before urging the WIPO General Assembly to keep the proposal on the committee agenda, but with no more special sessions, and no diplomatic conference, pending accord on terms, Paul Salmon, senior counsel in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s international relations office, said Fri. Left undecided, he told us, was whether webcasting might be considered.
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Talks collapsed late Thursday evening (CD June 13 p13). The U.S., Brazil and India hesitated to set a date for a diplomatic conference, the U.S. out of resistance to high- level talks until delegates came to terms on a treaty, Salmon said. Some countries preferred to put the matter aside for at least two years, he said.
The stall was “a welcome break from useless efforts to force consensus when there are no real grounds for it,” said an official from a developing country. Divergence on core normative issues was too broad for any other move, said the source. More attempts could come, but with the diplomatic conference unset delegates have more flexibility and time to reflect on what to do, the official said.
“We're disappointed,” said Heijo Ruijsenaars, copyright legal advisor for the European Broadcasting Union. It is “not a good sign” if the international community remains in discord on this point, he said.
Internet misappropriation of broadcast signals is a growing problem that will only worsen as broadcasters’ signal goes digital, said Ben Ivins, National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) senior associate general counsel for intellectual property and international legal affairs. The result could handicaps broadcasters’ ability to transmit knowledge, information and entertainment, he said.
NAB “notes with interest” European colleagues’ observation that broadcasters’ needs may have to be handled through regional or bilateral negotiations, Ivins said. “Opponents of WIPO’s efforts may end up regretting the lack of harmonization that could result from this approach,” he said.
The SCCR “set a high bar” for scheduling a diplomatic conference, said Knowledge Ecology International Director James Love. Technically, accord will remain a panel goal, if there is agreement on the objectives, scope and object of protection before it moves to high-level talks. Those are “topics for which there is no agreement in sight,” he said.
The negotiations mirrored and sometimes drove larger changes in WIPO culture, Love said. When they began, the issue simply involved demands by a powerful rights-owner group, broadcasters, for more commercial rights, he said. As talks continued, civil society groups began questioning the treaty’s potential to harm the Internet, and countries began asking deeper questions about its rationale, he said.
In the end, “broadcasters demanded too much and made too few concessions for the treaty to move forward,” Love said. Conversation in the SCCR must move to new topics, he said.
Verizon is pleased that WIPO saw that the language in question was not an appropriate basis for a global treaty, said Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel. Future talks should focus on signal theft, not new economic rights, she said.