New WIPO Terminology Said to Over-Guard Online Messages
The U.S. govt. last week proposed extending broadcast signal piracy protection to “netcasting,” saying confusion is resulting from use of “webcasting” in World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty negotiations. The move came in an Aug. 1 submission to WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright & Related Rights (SCCR), which decided in May to split provisions on traditional broadcasting rights from a U.S.-backed proposal to apply the protections to webcasting and simulcasting. But observers said the change in terminology could lead to legal uncertainty and overly expansive rights for online programming.
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Under the proposal, netcasting “means the transmission by wire or wireless means over a computer network, such as through Internet protocol… for simultaneous or near- simultaneous reception by members of the public… of sounds or of images” of prerecorded, scheduled programming that can be broadcast or cablecast; of an organized live event sent concurrently; or simultaneously cablecast or broadcast.
The new language aims to “clarify the meaning and scope of the protection for organizations which transmit signals over computer networks in the same manner as broadcasters and cablecasters,” the U.S. said. In proposing to have the broadcast treaty cover webcasting, the U.S. said, it never meant to protect “the ordinary use of the Internet or World Wide Web, such as through e-mail, blogs, websites and the like.” Netcasting describes computer-based signal transmissions and will avoid confusion with webcasting, us of which term “unnecessarily implied” ordinary activity on the Web would be covered. The new term comes from U.K. law’s definition of broadcasting, the govt. said.
The U.S. continues to believe that netcasters should get the same protection as traditional broadcasters, “and that any such protection should be only what is necessary to protect against signal piracy,” it said. But Consumer Project on Technology (CPT) Exec. Dir. James Love said: “There’s some dishonest talk here.”
The U.S. claims to want “thin rights” for netcasters, but it seeks parity between broadcasters and web/netcasters, perhaps imperiling the Internet, Love said. A new broadcast treaty probably would expand intellectual property rights granted by the Rome Convention, neither signed nor followed by the U.S., he said in a blog. “The U.S. government will have to decide which of these positions will be more important: To protect netcasting the same as broadcasting (in Europe), or to only protect netcasting from piracy?” Nor does the new term do much to narrow the definition of webcasting, he said.
The proposal shows a “lack of conceptual clarity” by seeming to take signal and content approaches that create legal uncertainty, said Cambridge U. Prof. Patricia Akester, who studied the draft WIPO broadcast treaty for UNESCO. And the idea that netcasters deserve the same protections as broadcasters and cablecasters “seems to advocate the establishment of exclusive rights for netcasters, which, in parallel with obligations concerning technological measures for protection of netcasting” could further restrict the public’s access to information, she said.
When the SCCR meets again Sept. 11-13, the only item on the agenda will be the broadcast treaty. At the last meeting’s close, delegates set an Aug. 1 deadline for proposals on webcasting and simulcasting. A working paper will emerge at a later committee meeting, after WIPO’s Sept. General Assembly.