p2pnet - rss feed: Lethal RIAA Broadcast Treaty
p2p news / p2pnet: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) held its 14th Session in Geneva to determine the fate of the controversial Broadcasting Treaty on May 1-5.
It’s, “remarkably unacceptable” and it’s, “currently being pushed through the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights,” says Anders Bylund in Ars Technica.
Even worse, it’s, "seemingly concieved [sic] by the RIAA and MPAA and backed by traditional old-line media businesses," he says.
"The Broadcasting Treaty, currently undergoing review at a UN convention in Geneva, Switzerland, contains passages that would severely restrict the concepts of fair use and freedom of speech - on a global level."
Here, in Intellectual Property Watch, IP Justice’s Robin Gross expains why the effort is so dangerous. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Contains Unsupported Webcasting and “Digital Locks”
By Robin Gross - IP Justice
In its final meeting before the General Assembly votes this autumn to send the proposed Broadcasting Treaty to a Diplomatic Conference for final treaty drafting, WIPO delegates will debate a far-reaching “wish list” of new rights for large broadcasting companies.
The proposed broadcasting treaty would create entirely new global rights for broadcasting companies who have neither created nor own the programming. What’s even more alarming is the proposal from the United States that the treaty regulate the Internet transmission of audio and video entertainment.
It is dangerous and inappropriate for an unelected international treaty body to undertake the task of creating entirely new rights, which currently exist in no national law, such as webcasting rights and anti-circumvention laws related to broadcasting. A global treaty is not the place for experimentation with new rights, but rather for the harmonization of existing legal norms. WIPO treads on shaky ground by proposing to create new rights that no elected body in the world has yet agreed to.
Artists are opposed to the broadcasting treaty because it would subvert creators’ rights to the new rights granted to broadcasting companies. Under the proposal, artists would need to beg permission from broadcasting companies in order to make any use of their own performances.
The general public interest would be harmed by the treaty’s proposal to ban bypassing “digital locks” used by broadcasting companies to restrict access to programming. WIPO treaties of 1996 created similar anti-circumvention rights for copyright holders. Laws such as the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 implemented this treaty in the United States. Even after many have doubted the wisdom in creating such rights for copyright holders, no case has yet to be made why broadcasting companies should be given an additional set of rights to lock information away. The negative unintended consequences of anti-circumvention measures have been shown to be more dangerous in practice than the harm they intend to address. A refusal to weigh the social costs of anti-circumvention measures would ignore the resolution of the WIPO General Assembly for a development agenda at WIPO in line with development goals and the global public interest.
The proposal threatens the public domain since it allows broadcasting companies to fence it off, while making it illegal for the public to access what is lawfully theirs. Existing fair use rights to use copyrighted broadcasts would vanish under the treaty as well. For example, if US President Bush gave an interview to Fox News, Fox could prevent any subsequent use of that footage including fair use, commentary, or criticism of President Bush - at its sole discretion - under the new anti-circumvention rights created by this treaty. Much of the political humor available on Comedy Central’s “The Jon Stewart Show” could become illegal under this treaty. Bloggers and other citizen journalists would also suffer because they would need permission to use small portions of video for news reporting, commentary or educational uses. In response, Colombia submitted a proposal that would permit circumvention to facilitate non-infringing uses of broadcasts.
In prior SCCR meetings, an overwhelming number of WIPO member states argued against including anti-circumvention measures in the treaty; yet this provision still exists in the current draft. Rather than include it as an appendix, these measures should have been removed from draft and placed in “working paper” since they received so little support.
The current draft reflects a basic lack of respect for the concerns addressed by numerous member states at prior SCCR meetings that discussed these provisions. International treaty bodies that claim to be mere instruments of the will of their member states cannot simply ignore the concerns of the vast majority of member states who expressed discomfort with any type of anti-circumvention measures or webcasting provisions in the treaty. A United Nations specialized agency has an obligation to uphold certain democratic principles when deciding how to draft a treaty. A refusal to make substantive changes in the proposal’s text to reflect concerns expressed by member states calls into question the legitimacy of the entire process.
The current proposal would obligate countries to pass laws in excess of their existing obligations under TRIPS [World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights]. The proposal’s increase in the term of the broadcasters’ rights, and its restriction of the exceptions and limitations to these rights create a significant barrier to the access to knowledge.
The proposed broadcasting treaty would also stifle innovation and favor entrenched industry players. Member States should be cautious of this proposal and the benefits it promises. The social costs to creating yet another layer of broadcasting rights that sit on top of creators’ rights cannot be ignored.
The current Basic Draft is such a poor reflection of the expressed will of WIPO member states that the broadcasting treaty is nowhere near ready for a Diplomatic Conference at this time.
WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Contains Unsupported Webcasting and “Digital Locks”
(Thanks, Sandro)
May 6th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
All this means is that people will find other ways of connecting their computers together, likened to a massive world wide LAN, private communities which will police their own and make it exceedingly hard to regulate what goes on within. The future implementation of effective wireless will speed this along.
I say BRING IT ON! There’s no question that the masses will ultimately win out against those who wish to constrain digital freedoms. Hold onto your old computers for when they build hardware that restrains personal use. Go opensource whenever possible. It takes software engineers months and maybe years to work out copy protections and cyberliberatarians only days to circumvent it. We shall overcome…
May 6th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
…where consumers are being stripped of rights we used to take for granted, like fair us for instance, demand for these services (entertainment) should drop to zero. The problem is a lot of people still buy the C.R.A.P they have to offer, thus creating a market for it. If people just stopped buying (everyone), media companies soon would freak out and they would probably abandon their “Control Everything Campaign”, because it’s always better to sell a little, than nothing at all.
May 6th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
[quote]We shall overcome…[/quote]
Hell yeah!
May 6th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
The internet’s bare bones are under assault by corpratists intent on controlling it for profit. It’s usually at the country level and usually the USA, but this is how it all starts. They introduce the most draconian proposal in order to gain half of what they asked. Unfortunately that half takes away 3/4 of our rights in the process.
May 7th, 2006 at 3:57 am
Now watch them bitch and moan because they cannot record peoples’ actions. Turn about is fair play!!!
Anti-”Piracy” signals:
These types of signals are used to tell electronic and computer devices to not record or display in certain formats any content that has these signals embedded. Most current forms of these signals can now be easily circumvented. The cartels now want the government to mandate the inclusion of circuits that will stop the functioning of devices when these signals are detected. The cartels want this type of circuitry installed in just about every type of camera, audio, or recording device. When this happens, it might not be a bad thing for criminals dissidents, or privacy advocates, because all they have to do is transmit the proper signal and turn off every camera or device that records their actions. Imagine being able to miss a traffic signal and not worry about having been photographed by some machine and being forced to pay some exorbitant fine. The broadcast flag everyone is bitching about may become a good privacy tool.
see http://www.p2pnet/story/8701 “Dangerous Weapons”
May 7th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
See: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42/230491.html#rid-230525
Rights of Broadcasters
Copyright in communication signals
21. (1) Subject to subsection (2), a broadcaster has a copyright in the communication signals that it broadcasts, consisting of the sole right to do the following in relation to the communication signal or any substantial part thereof:
(a) to fix it,
(b) to reproduce any fixation of it that was made without the broadcaster’s consent,
(c) to authorize another broadcaster to retransmit it to the public simultaneously with its broadcast, and
(d) in the case of a television communication signal, to perform it in a place open to the public on payment of an entrance fee,
and to authorize any act described in paragraph (a), (b) or (d).
Conditions for copyright
(2) Subsection (1) applies only if the broadcaster
(a) at the time of the broadcast, had its headquarters in Canada, in a country that is a WTO Member or in a Rome Convention country; and
(b) broadcasts the communication signal from that country.
Exception
(3) Notwithstanding subsection (2), if the Minister is of the opinion that a Rome Convention country or a country that is a WTO Member does not grant the right mentioned in paragraph (1)(d), the Minister may, by a statement published in the Canada Gazette, declare that broadcasters that have their headquarters in that country are not entitled to that right.
R.S., 1985, c. C-42, s. 21; 1994, c. 47, s. 59; 1997, c. 24, s. 14.
May 7th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
“The proposed broadcasting treaty would also stifle innovation and favor entrenched industry players. Member States should be cautious of this proposal and the benefits it promises.”
The problem is that the majority of WIPO members, that represent the poorer countries that represent the vast majority of the world’s population are represented by one of these:
1. Persons that are not remotely qualified to discuss issues related to democary, free speech or philosophical issues. They are mostly unqualified friends of someone in power back home, where cronyism is rampant.
2. Persons who represent politicians who have already been paid off with favors by the wealthy political investors (the international cartels) back home. It’s subtle imperialism in action.
Only shakeups in the poorer countries (as in Bolivia recently) will prevent addtional injustices as exemplified by the copyright and patent laws that favor the rich countries that have already made it.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
May 8th, 2006 at 10:45 am
The idea that this treaty will suddenly happen and all hell will break loose makes one fatal misconception about international law - treaties do not become law until states sign up to them, and even then they are only legally binding on the states which DO sign up. So if there is so much international opposition to this treaty then it will simply fail.
May 8th, 2006 at 11:42 am
“So if there is so much international opposition to this treaty then it will simply fail.”
It doen’t work like that.
Traties thet are good for the great commercial powers of a few countries are usually bad for the many poor countries. Take patents for example. These are controlled by a few countries, that are the ony beneficiaries of the international patent treaties. As a result a pill that costs one cent to make sells for hundreds of time in the drug store of a poor country.
But the small or poor countries that are weak on patents are pressued to sign the treaty so that the kids of politicians of those poor countries can enter USA universities, or so the country can get loans to buy armaments and the latest prestige airliner aircrafts. Then there are the threats of sanctions. Politicians of third world countries are simply are corrupted with offers and threats. Just remember Iraq as an example of what can happens when a small country does not abide. An extreme example, but an example.
Actually, the lobby-buy-legislator practised in the USA is also a world phenomena that also contributes to the buying of overseas politicians.