Broadcast Treaty Talks to Begin in Earnest in July, But Accord on Core Issues Remains Elusive
Debate on the actual language of a treaty updating broadcasting copyright protections begins in July, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Law Division Director Michele Woods told us Friday. The April 10-12 meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) gave delegations the opportunity to discuss issues in depth, and the July meeting is likely to focus on the three core matters of who will benefit from the treaty, what the object of protection will be, and what rights broadcasting organizations will be granted, she said. NAB and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said progress was made at the “intersessional” meeting, including a growing consensus that signal protection must be extended to the Internet, but the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) said agreement on any issue is as far away as ever.
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NAB is “gratified that the US has joined in the emerging consensus” that broadcasting rights must extend to all platforms including the Internet, it said in a statement. That is essential for broadcasters today and in the future, it said. The U.S. has proposed protecting against “true signal piracy, real-time transmission of the signal to the public without authorization” (CD April 12 p14).
How to define which organizations are included in the treaty hasn’t been decided, EBU Head of Intellectual Property Heijo Ruijsenaars told us. Once it is, the next question is which signals by those organizations to protect, he said. No one objects to including terrestrial, satellite and over-the-air services, so the key issue at the SCCR meeting will be Internet transmissions, he said. The EBU thinks simulcast signals should be covered, but whether to include other Internet transmissions will have to be clarified, he said. Many broadcasters already have catch-up services which they believe are part of their normal activities and should receive protection, he said. But more discussion is needed on what to do about original programming that’s only made available online, he said.
Another issue involves live sports events, Ruijsenaars said. The idea isn’t that they should be protected as such, but that in some cases -- such as the London 2012 Olympics, where there was so much activity that the BBC couldn’t broadcast it all on TV and gave viewers access online via the “red button” -- such Internet programming linked to TV broadcasts also needs to be safeguarded, he said.
But there’s still a “very big divergence of views” in all areas. Who gets protected, what’s protected and how to protect it are still up in the air, CCIA Geneva Representative Nick Ashton-Hart told us. There appears to be more interest in a less rights-based regime in favor of signals-based protections, but that’s “by no means the consensus -- quite the contrary,” he said.
CCIA’s view remains that copyright rights aren’t needed to protect against signal piracy, Ashton-Hart said. Some proposals seek to protect broadcasts made simultaneously over the Internet but not those transmissions made solely online, he said. Broadcasters want protection for things that aren’t even broadcasts, such as recordings of broadcasts, he said.
It’s safe to say that many countries in the past have rejected the idea of including any Internet-related transmissions in a treaty, Ashton-Hart said. Another group wanted protections for simulcasts related to broadcasts, while the “technology neutrality” group wanted protection for all platforms, he said. Now some have moved toward protection for simultaneous Internet broadcasts, but some countries, notably India and Japan, still oppose any protections for Internet transmissions, he said. Until there’s agreement on at least one of the three core issues, it’s hard to see how anything can move forward to a binding result, he said.
There are “too many moving parts” at this point for CCIA to say what it would support, Ashton-Hart said. CCIA plans to have a conference call in the next few weeks with other non-governmental organizations and some companies to see where they stand and what they want to do, he said. CCIA is likely to reiterate its call for no copyright rights, just signal protection, and no protections for “fixation” of signals, he said.