Broadcast Treaty Should Be Key Priority, Some Delegates Say as Negotiations Near Resumption
Negotiations on a treaty to update protection of copyrighted broadcast signals are set to resume Dec. 16 in the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). Before delegates get to the meat of the agreement, however, an extraordinary Dec. 10-12 WIPO General Assembly (GA) meeting must decide what the SCCR will work on this year, a question left hanging after its October meeting. One proposal floated by central European and Baltic countries is to prioritize the broadcast treaty, a position backed by broadcasters, observers said. Talks on the actual language of the controversial treaty were supposed to take place in July but were postponed.
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"There’s a tug-of-war on priorities” for the SCCR’s agenda this coming year, said Computer & Communications Industry Association Geneva Representative Nick Ashton-Hart. During the discussion on the WIPO treaty for the visually impaired, which was adopted in June, the African Group wanted all copyright limitation and exception agenda items tackled in one go, because they didn’t trust developed countries to continue talking about them if African delegations allowed the treaty for the blind to go first, he told us. At the GA, the African Group’s “fears were borne out,” he said. Developed countries said the broadcast treaty should now take top priority, with limitations and exceptions to follow, he said. Developing countries balked, saying that wasn’t the deal. As a result, Ashton-Hart said the SCCR’s work program is one of the items the GA couldn’t agree on and will now debate next week, he said.
On the table is a “non-paper” by the central European and Baltic states (CEBS) (http://xrl.us/bp885t) setting out a road map for dealing with the broadcast treaty. Those countries believe “it is high time to strongly focus the work of the [SCCR] to find a way to conclude the treaty on protection of broadcasting organizations in the near future,” the document said. There’s still considerable work to be done and discrepancies among WIPO members’ positions to be bridged, it said. That can happen only if “this concrete topic is devoted sufficient time in the 2014 meetings to improve the current text,” it said.
The CEBS asked WIPO members to direct that the SCCR “accelerate and finalize the work on the broadcasters’ treaty as a matter of priority,” the non-paper said. The SCCR should devote no fewer than three days of each of its three 2014 meetings to the negotiations, and submit a text to the GA next year, it said. The proposal also asked the GA to consider convening a diplomatic conference on the treaty in 2015. “All broadcasters support the CEBS proposal,” European Broadcasting Union Head of Intellectual Property Heijo Ruijsenaars told us.
It’s rumored the GA will refer the “priority” question to the SCCR. The last SCCR meeting decided to continue to work “on all subjects of the agenda,” taking into account their equal importance and different levels of maturity (http://xrl.us/bp888h). Disagreement over whether the broadcast treaty should get top billing makes no sense, as that means nothing moves, one source said.
The discussion at the April “intersessional” SCCR meeting showed that accord on key issues remains elusive (CD April 15 p8). They include the three core matters of who will benefit from the treaty, what the object of protection will be and what rights broadcasting organizations will get, said WIPO Copyright Law Division Director Michele Woods then. From the perspective of Knowledge Ecology International, the concerns are the same, said Geneva Representative Thiru Balasubramaniam. Among other things, the treaty will create another layer of copyright protection when signals are already safeguarded by other means, including copyright law, he said. Another issue is whether the accord should cover Internet transmissions, he said.
Japan wants to include broadcast and cablecast signals transmitted over “computer networks” within the scope of the treaty. In a Nov. 28 document (http://xrl.us/bp89cb) it said it wants to “find a way out of our prolonged discussion” on the scope of the treaty’s applications and move forward. Scope of application “has been one of the toughest issues,” it said. The working document the SCCR will discuss is at http://xrl.us/bot7g8.