IP Justice
Intervention Statement:
Draft Proposal for a WIPO Broadcasting Treaty
18 - 22 June 2007 ~ WIPO SCCR 2nd Special Session ~ Geneva
Thank you, Madam Vice-Chair, and congratulations to your election. I speak on behalf of IP Justice, an international civil liberties organization that promotes balanced intellectual property law. Based in San Francisco, IP Justice also maintains representatives in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, London, and Athens.
After ten years of discussion even the very basic question of what the purpose of such a treaty should be still seems to be unclear. Some believe that an Update of broadcasters rights is needed. The question I would like to elaborate in the next minutes is: Why?
One answer could be that broadcasting organizations are in need of an Update because their signals are pirated (today especially by using deferred transmissions over the Internet). The most used example for this are sports broadcasts. But yesterday even the Chair clearly stated that one hardly can find any sports broadcast that is not in some way
copyrighted. So broadcasters in this case already have all the means against piracy which national and international copyright is providing — even against deferred transmission over the Internet. The same is true in all cases where broadcasters are the producers of the content they are broadcasting and in all other cases where someone else has the
copyright in the content.
From this perspective it seems that to solve the problem of piracy - no Update - but the Enforcement of rights is needed — which by no means can be solved by a new treaty. Being this so piracy can’t be the answer why we need such a new treaty.
The explanatory comment on the new non-paper seems to give another answer by stressing the need of new rights for broadcasters. There it can be read that representatives of broadcasting organizations have stated that “if the Treaty is not based on some elementary and absolutely necessary rights, the process should be abandoned.”
What are these elementary and absolutely necessary rights? In the explanatory comment this clearly means a minimum of intellectual property like rights. But this necessity seems to be recognized only in one half of the member states — namely those who have signed the Rome Convention. In all other countries — and it’s not one or two countries
but nearly half of the countries of the world — broadcast industries are prospering and expanding without these “elementary” and “absolutely necessary” rights. And they sometimes are even more successful than in those parts of the world where copyright-like rights are granted to them.
So it seems no direct need for such rights is given which leaves to all of us the question if we *want *to give broadcasters new rights. Looking at a prospering industry on the one hand and the negative effects many proposals of the draft non-papers and proposals will have on societies as IP Justice and many others have elaborated over the last years our
answer is a clear “no”.
In our view the only way to solve the anticipated problems and to complain with the General Assemblies mandate is a draft-treaty which is narrowed down to a real signal-theft approach meaning that no exclusive rights are granted therein. Reading on the other hand that broadcasters do not want an instrument without exclusive rights and seeing on the other hand no need for such rights I have one last question to you:
Wouldn’t it perhaps be better to have no treaty at all?
IP Justice welcomes the opportunity to further discuss these questions and views as well as those of Member States at any time.
Thank you, Madam Vice-Chairman.