GENEVA -- Tech companies and civil liberties groups lobbied for a broadcast signal piracy-only treaty at a Tues. meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright & Related Rights (SCCR) here. The signal-theft approach, wide supported not only by those groups but in the U.S. and developing nations, is opposed by broadcasters and the EU, which want a rights- based accord aligning broadcast protections with earlier WIPO author and phonogram treaties (CD Sept 11 p10), Michelle Childs, Consumer Project on Technology’s (CPT) head of European affairs, said.
Germany must reimburse telcos and ISPs for mandatory eavesdropping on customers, the German Competitive Carriers Assn. (VATM) was told Mon. by the Max Planck Institute for International Criminal Law. Under the Telecom Act of 2004 Germany is supposed to write a law detailing procedures and rules for reimbursement, but has not, attorney Axel Spies said. Parliament’s Upper Chamber, representing the states, has signaled it might void the provision, sparking industry concern. The issue now is being discussed in the federal cabinet, Spies said. The only law on reimbursement, which carriers say doesn’t cover them, covers witness and expert payments. The Planck Institute said carriers must be able to recoup costs, urging creation of a specific ordinance or amendment to the law. “Whoever calls the piper must pay for it, namely law enforcement agencies and their governments,” Spies said on behalf of the VATM. The group hopes the opinion spurs legislation preserving reimbursement, he said.
Foes of a broadcasting treaty proposed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)(CD Sept 8 p5, Sept 6 p6) utterly fail to show how more copyright protection for broadcasters would hurt them, U.S. broadcasters said. ISPs, telcos and nongovernmental bodies keep saying “horrible things are going to happen” if broadcast rights are updated, NAB Senior Assoc. Gen. Counsel Ben Ivins told us. He urged them to “show me your pain” by citing specific examples of where the sort of protections contemplated by the treaty have caused “bad stuff.”
LONDON -- British Commonwealth members may run the gamut from industrial nations to struggling African countries, but all agree mobile communications are a key economic driver, they said here Mon. Mobile phones have become “essential tools” of life, with some 2 billion in use worldwide, said Margaret Hodge, U.K. minister for industry, Dept. for Trade & Industry. She was speaking at the Commonwealth Telecom Organization (CTO) Forum. In Africa, cellphones are the “symbol” of use of information & communications technologies (ICTs), with air time traded like currency, she said.
Mobile operators can block service to stolen phones but don’t often do so, and that’s fueling a problem in Africa, Nokia Dir.-Strategy & Business Development, New Growth Markets Petteri Terho said Tues. at the Commonwealth Telecom Organization conference in London. In S. Africa, 30% of phones are stolen and recycled, said William Hearmon, African CDMA Forum chmn. Operators claim a social duty to cut services when that happens but care more about getting paid, he said. Unlike in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, in Africa concern over stolen mobiles is less about identity theft -- Africans “don’t give a damn” about that, he told us -- than about losing one’s phone, Terho said. A Ghanaian legislator agreed theft is on the upswing, and both men asked operators what they intend to do about it. The matter involves 2 issues, said GSM Assn. (GSMA) chief govt. & regulatory affairs officer Tom Phillips. Many stolen phones are sold in the gray market and emerging economies, spurred by the cost of high-quality phones, a factor govts. could reduce by cutting taxes on entry-level phones, said Phillips. Operators could help by regularly polling central equipment registers to see if a phone’s unique identifier is showing up as stolen and if so, blocking service, he said. GSM members often do that, and that service is available to all operators in the GSM world, Phillips said.
LONDON -- Mobile rules that work in developed nations don’t necessarily fit emerging economies, speakers said here Tues. at the Commonwealth Telecom Organization (CTO) forum. Govts. in developing countries should cast policy in the context of broader social and economic issues, Vodafone Group Services International Policy Dir. Neil Gough said. He and others urged caution in forcing one-size-fits-all solutions on developing countries.
German telecom regulator BNetzA set mobile call termination conditions for the country’s mobile carriers. Orders given Wed. apply to T-Mobile, Vodafone, E-Plus and O2, and include interconnection obligations, a requirement to provide a standard offer for access services, an anti-bias clause and a condition that BNetzA approve termination rates in advance. Under Germany’s telecom act, the deadline for rate-setting is 10 weeks, meaning actual prices will be released by mid-Nov. The German Competitive Carriers Assn. (VATM) lauded the orders but said “this is not the end of the story.” The regulator must set rates for services in line with the law’s principle of efficient provisioning, said attorney Axel Spies, representing VATM. That means it must study each carrier’s costs based on actual documents, “not just by comparing the rates with similar rates in other countries.” Review should lead to a structure discerning between large and small mobile networks operators and authorizing different rates for each, weighing, among other things, which frequencies each has available for its services, Spies said.
News that a journalist allegedly tapped mobile phone calls of Britain’s royal family brought a swift response Wed. from the country’s privacy czar. As word filtered out that News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was in custody while Scotland Yard’s antiterrorism branch investigated whether he and others intercepted calls from the royal household, including those of Prince Charles, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it “takes breaches of privacy very seriously.” Although any prosecution for interception of communications would likely fall under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act rather than the Data Protection Act (DPA), the ICO said it stands ready to help the police if needed. In a May report, What Price Privacy?, the ICO notified Parliament of “evidence of a widespread and organized undercover market in confidential personal information.” Among the buyers are journalists ferreting out stories by getting hold of people’s unlisted phone numbers and call records, the ICO said. Current DPA penalties aren’t sufficient to deter “this lucrative and widespread illegal trade,” said the office, which called on the govt. to boost fines and jail time. The Dept. of Constitutional Affairs is seeking public feedback on the proposal. The ICO said it has the names of more than 300 reporters implicated in the illegal trade of private information. “We have given them a clear warning that we will not hesitate to take action if they are suspected in future of committing offenses.”
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.
The EC should free up spectrum for mobile multimedia broadcasting before the digital switchover, industry players told the EC’s Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG). There’s growing evidence that consumers want mobile TV services now, they said in comments made public Tues. Several also urged the RSPG not to recommend reserving spectrum for particular services.