(Geneva)  The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a treaty-making arm of the United Nations, is considering drafting a new international treaty to provide broadcasting corporations with sweeping new rights that would permit them to control the public's use of broadcasted audio and video.

From 7-9 June, in Geneva, Switzerland, WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights is debating a text that would create copyright protection over broadcast signals for 50 years, more than twice the current length of protection permitted under the Rome Convention, which allows countries to give broadcasting corporations 20 years of exclusive rights.  A 50-year term far exceeds the economic lifespan of a broadcast and the time necessary for a broadcasting corporation to recoup its investment in the programming. 

"Unless broadcasting companies plan on transmitting their signals to Jupiter, a 50-year term makes even less sense because signals only exist for the short time they take to travel through the air to reach their point of reception," explained Robin Gross, Executive Director of IP Justice, an international civil liberties organization that promotes balanced intellectual property laws.

Similar to the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the text also contains prohibitions on the circumvention of technological restrictions controlling broadcast signals, even if the underlying programming is in the public domain.  One proposal outlaws any device that could help someone to decrypt an encrypted signal without permission, and is broad enough to include banning personal computers and technical information about signals technology.  It would also require all media devices to obey use-restrictions that are encoded into the programming by the broadcaster, further trampling on consumer's fair use rights under copyright law.

"The treaty attempts to be a 'back-door' attempt to extend copyright protections indefinitely, by permitting companies to broadcast public domain material and then control the public's use of the underlying public domain programming," said Robin Gross, an intellectual property law attorney.

The proposal is particularly problematic because it based on "bad science".  It grants broadcasting companies a slew of new rights based on the "fixation" of a broadcast signal.  However, broadcast signals exist in the air and "dissolve" upon reception and therefore cannot, as a matter of simple physics, become "fixed" as much of the treaty presumes. 

All retransmissions of broadcast media, including through the Internet, would also be regulated by this proposal.  "The WIPO Broadcasting Treaty endangers freedom of expression on the Internet since it would regulate consumers' ordinary online activity and treat citizens who disseminate media through the Internet as if they were commercial broadcasters committing piracy," said Gross.

IP Justice is accredited to participate as an "observer" at the WIPO meeting and advocates that countries reject the Broadcasting Treaty proposal as over-reaching and harmful to traditional civil liberties and technological innovation.  IP Justice published an analysis of the committee's proposal, which is available online at the organization's website www.ipjustice.org/wipo.

 

IP Justice is an international civil liberties organization that promotes balanced intellectual property laws. IP Justice defends consumer rights to use digital media worldwide and is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco. IP Justice was founded in 2002 by Robin Gross, who serves as its Executive Director. To learn more about IP Justice, visit the website at http://www.ipjustice.org.