Broadcast Treaty Seen Likely, with Web Broadcasting, Cablecasting Signals Protected
Broadcasters said Friday they're pleased with the progress made on substantive issues during two days of talks (CD Dec 5 p9) at the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) on a treaty updating copyrighted broadcast signals. In proposed conclusions (http://xrl.us/bqbq23), many countries appeared to edge closer to agreeing that traditional broadcasting and cablecasting organizations would be the beneficiaries of the treaty, but not pure webcasters, said European Broadcasting Union (EBU) Head of Intellectual Property Heijo Ruijsenaars in an interview.
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From the discussions, “it was understood that broadcasting and cablecasting are included in the scope of application of the proposed Treaty on a signal based approach, subject to clarification of the inclusion of cablecasting organizations in the definition of broadcasting organizations in national laws and of the effect of that inclusion on the scope of application,” said the draft document. It was slightly, but not substantively, modified during Friday’s discussion. If online transmissions by traditional broadcasters are to be included, there will be further discussion on whether such protection would be mandatory or optional, the draft said.
The debate also covered online transmissions of simultaneous and unchanged transmissions of broadcasts, and said more talks will take place about whether to include on-demand Internet transmissions or deferred and unchanged broadcast transmissions, the draft said. There will also be more discussion about whether to protect pre-broadcast signals, it said.
The EBU, NAB and other broadcasters said in a joint statement that “at the end of the two days allocated to discussion of the proposed broadcast treaty, broadcasters said they were pleased with the progress that was being made.” SCCR Chairman Martin Moscoso encouraged delegates to engage in text-based discussions and move away from general concepts, they said. That approach resulted in valuable contributions from Japan, Kenya, Mexico and the U.S., they said. While the U.S. didn’t submit a formal proposal, the approach it took was constructive in advancing progress toward a diplomatic conference, an NAB spokesman said. The approach didn’t contain everything broadcasters want but recognized that protecting broadcast signals over the Internet is essential, he said.
Not everyone was happy about the SCCR outcome. It “should be a wakeup call for all of those who thought this awful treaty was dead,” said Knowledge Ecology International Executive Director James Love. The WIPO secretariat wants a treaty and doesn’t really care what’s in it, he told us. The EU wants it to extend the EU’s domestic norms and to block work on copyright exceptions, he said. “And broadcasters have political influence everywhere.” Paragraphs 5 and 6 of the draft, which deal with Internet transmission of simultaneous and unchanged broadcast transmissions, and on-demand transmissions, “illustrate how one possible outcome is a brand new form of intellectual property rights, piled on top of copyright, and covering even public domain and openly licensed content,” he said.
Two-and-a-half days will be devoted to talks on the broadcast treaty at the next SCCR meeting, which hasn’t yet been set, the draft said. Some nations, such as the central European and Baltic states, want the matter to go to diplomatic conference in 2015.