WIPO deliberations on "casting" treaty

Monday's meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR).

James Love <james.love[_at_]cptech.org> +41.79.566.0475

I am in Geneva attending 3 days of meetings at WIPO, mostly focused on the proposed treaty on Broad/cable/web/casting. The treaty seeks to expand and extend a "related right" for casting organizations, that would exist independent of copyright, and extend to areas where is there no copyright in the underlying information, or where the casting organization did not have authorization from copyright owners to manage or restrict access to information created by others. (see http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/wipo-casting.html).

I am part of a very large delegation from the Civil Society Coalition
(CSC), which registered a dozen members for the meeting, of whom eleven
are here in Geneva.

The day began with an informational session on the problems facing the blind, and in particular, the proposals by organizations for the visually impaired to have global exceptions to copyrights in order to reverse engineer work, and create products such as Braille, large type, or audio performances of works, and to have the ability to export such works across borders, including via the Internet. The publishers opposed these efforts.

At 1 pm the South Centre held a briefing for several developing country WIPO delegates on the importance of new open collaborative efforts to create public goods. CPTech worked with the South Centre on the event.   The speakers included Sir John Sulton, last year's winner of the Nobel prize for Medicine (the Human Genome Project and open life sciences), Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (Free Libre Open Source Software), Darius Cuplinskas from the Open Society Institute (Open Access Journals) and Cory Doctorow
(Importance of open standards for the Internet and for innovation).

At 3 pm, the SCCR meeting formally began, with a discussion of the proposed treaty on broadcasting, cablecasting and webcasting. The chair began with a review of the history of discussions, which began in 1997.   The treaty was described as an "updating" of the TRIPS and Rome Convention provisions on broadcasting, but it clearly was going much further, extending the term of protection from 20 to 50 years, expanding the covered platforms (including in some proposals all computer networks), and creating a host of new rights and national enforcement obligations.

The meeting began with a number of comments by national governments, many urging the SCCR to find a way to move forward to a diplomatic convention in 2005. The majority of delegations who spoke did not want webcasting included in the new treaty. The US clearly did.

Senegal asked that a committee be set up to draft a proposed treaty.

The US said that it was trying to balance the needs of right owners, and the legitimate interests of consumers, while providing new protections against "misappropriation." In the discussion on the scope of covered material, the US made a surprising and welcome (by CPTech and other CSC NGOs) intervention, saying that the definition of the scope of material was possibly too broad, and that this should be worked on, to make sure that it did not cover materials on ordinary web pages.

Russia was one of several countries supporting a wide array of new commercial rights for "casting" organization.

Australia was one of several countries opposing the extension of the treaty to the Internet, referring to some Internet webcasters as a "motley lot." More importantly, apparently in Australia, courts have recently held that a "single frame" constitutes a broadcast, illustrating how difficult it will be to limit the scope of covered materials.

Canada called for a scaling back of the treaty to deal mostly with anti-piracy of broadcasting, and avoiding new content management rights for broadcasting organizations.

China expressed concern over webcasting provisions, saying the technology was not mature enough for inclusion in this treaty, and proposing a separate regulation be considered at a later date. I believe that China made a comment about the rights extending to groups who were not the original right owners, and comparing casting organizations to "users," but I'm not confident my notes are correct on this.

Kenya proposed a long list of technical changes in the proposed treaty, including a proposal that the 50 year term of protection would begin after the last (rather than the first) broadcast. Kenya also proposed elimination of formalities, making this an "accidental" rights such as copyright (term coined by James Boyle and others), where rights are automatic, creating burdens on the public to secure rights, even when no right was ever desired in the first place.

Today NGOs may be allowed to speak. There are dozens of industry and right-owners NGOs, plus one library NGO and the CSC. If given the opportunity, I will talk about the inappropriate use of a 50 year term of protection for a right based up investment, the scope of content covered (to exclude coverage of text, data, software and more generally public domain materials), and the dangers of applying this right to the Internet.

-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:james.love@cptech.org
tel. +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040