Proposal for a WIPO Broadcast Treaty
Should Broadcasting Companies be Granted New Intellectual Property Rights Over Signals Transmitting Information?
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Broadcast Treaty Proposal
"The Broadcast Treaty is Dead: Long Live the Broadcast Treaty"
After nine years in the making, the 2007 WIPO General Assembly voted to NOT convene a Diplomatic Conference that would create a world-wide treaty to give broadcasting companies unprecedented rights over information. The General Assembly re-affirmed the recommendation of the WIPO Copyright Committee (SCCR) in June 2007 to cut-short the proposed Broadcast Treaty. IP Justice, together with a broad range of public interest groups and tech-industry companies fought against the proposed WIPO Broadcast Treaty since it would have threatened freedom of expression and innovation.
But despite the decision at WIPO in 2007 to kill the treaty, the broadcast industry has moved its effort to pass the Broadcast Treaty to a new forum: the Council of Europe. This makes sense since the European broadcast industry was the only proponent for the treaty among WIPO Member States after the US lost its bid to include Webcasting within the treaty in 2006. Read these reports from the European Digital Rights Initiative (EDRi) and IP-Watch and the Council of Europe on CoE’s resuscitation of the Broadcast Treaty.
Background on WIPO Broadcast Treaty
Trans-national broadcasting companies have called for “updating” the 1961 Rome Convention and proposed a new international instrument that would create copyright-type rights for broadcasting companies over the broadcast signals transmitting information. The proposal for a "Broadcast Treaty" threatened to chill freedom of expression, stifle innovation and give traditional broadcasting companies an unfair advantage over artists, innovators, and consumers on the Internet. The United States continues to push for regulation of webcasting and additional penalties when consumers bypass digital restrictions placed on information by broadcast companies.
Key Documents on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty:
15 Mar, 2008: WIPO Copyright Committee Considers Many Proposals for 2008 Work Program
WIPO Copyright Committee: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
'Broadcast Treaty Chair' Remains, Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright Considered
(15 March 2008) The WIPO Copyright Committee (SCCR) met from 10-12 March 2008 in Geneva to debate the future work program for the committee after the Member States ...
12 Mar, 2008: WIPO Copyright Committee Done For Year; Exceptions And Limitations ‘Here To Stay’ 
"The World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee on Wednesday concluded work until next November in a way similar to recent years, with the same chair, European dominance, no agreement, and division over a proposed treaty on broadcasters’ rights. But it also contained the elevation of a proposal to improve exceptions and limitations to copyright, and a proposal for four ...
11 Mar, 2008: WIPO Copyright Committee Begins New Era With Revised Agenda, Same Chair (IP-Watch)
The World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee on Monday began a new era in the wake of a failed decade of negotiations for a broadcasters’ rights treaty. But it will tackle its new agenda including limitations and exceptions to copyright with the same chairman who guided the broadcasting talks with fervour. Finland’s Jukka Liedes was re-elected chairman of the ...
21 Feb, 2008: Council of Europe Lurches Forward to Create Broadcasters Rights
Council of Europe takes step to create the Broadcast Treaty that WIPO Member States rejected in 2007. Interestingly, CoE calls the rejection of the treaty at WIPO as "deadlock" rather than admitting that the only ones who wanted the treaty were a handful of European broadcasters and the treaty was REJECTED, not deadlocked.
19 Dec, 2007: Broadcast Treaty Resuscitated by the Council of Europe (EDRi)
Pending the approval of its Committee of Ministers, the Council of Europe will try to promote a new broadcasting international document, building on the failed convention for the protection of broadcasting signals of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). As WIPO's 184 members have failed in agreeing upon a text for the treaty and as the conference for a ...
10 Dec, 2007: Broadcast Treaty: Council of Europe Picks Up Where WIPO Left Off (IP-Watch)
The Council of Europe is deliberating on whether to negotiate a convention to protect broadcasters’ signals against piracy and thereby take up the issue from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) where negotiations on a proposed broadcasting treaty came to a standstill earlier this year. The Council’s decision to proceed depends on approval by its Committee of Ministers. The ...
5 Nov, 2007: WIPO Committees Casting About For Future Work (IP-Watch)
WIPO enforcement committee last week heard from a series of intellectual property rights enforcers and others before attempting unsuccessfully to agree on the future work and moving to consultations till February. Meanwhile, separate consultations are continuing for a mandate for the WIPO copyright committee whose meeting has been postponed to next year.... WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights ...
28 Sep, 2007: Decision on the WIPO Broadcast Treat at 2007 General Assembly
"The General Assembly is invited to ... decide that the subject of broadcasting organizations and cablecasting organizations be retained on the agenda of the SCCR for its regular sessions and consider convening of a Diplomatic Conference only after agreement on objectives, specific scope and object of protection has been achieved.''
28 Sep, 2007: Notes on the Broadcasting Treaty from the 2007 WIPO General Assembly
"WIPO Deputy Director General Michael Keplingler introduced the background of the special sessions, following last year’s GA
“During the second special session it became clear that no dipcon could take place in 2007”
In the informal discussion it became evident that during the session it would not be possible to carry out the mandate of the GA
Several dels wanted ...
22 Jun, 2007: Broadcast Treaty will be dead for a long time
"Today member states of WIPO decided that there will be neither a diplomatic conference on the proposed Broadcast Treaty, nor any more Special Sessions of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights (SCCR). Till the end the Chair Yukka Liedes and the WIPO Secretariat intensely tried to keep the process on a way, at last by proposing that ...
- View all entries under Broadcasting Treaty
8 May, 2006: IP Justice: “WIPO Pushes Forward with Broadcasting Treaty - Webcasting Deferred”
By IP Justice Executive Director Robin D. Gross
8 May 2006
An agreement was reached on 5 May 2006 at the conclusion of a United Nations treaty negotiation in Geneva to exclude the issue of webcasting from a controversial treaty proposal to create new rights for broadcasting companies.
The UN Specialized Agency in the business of enacting global treaties on intellectual property ...
8 May, 2006: “Webcasting Gets a Reprieve” in MIT Technology Review
5 May, 2006: IP Justice Slides on Broadcasting Treaty at iTechlaw Conference, San Francisco Fairmont Hotel [PowerPoint .ppt format]
4 May, 2006: Joint Position of NGOs on Including Webcasting in Broadcasting Treaty [Word .doc format]
4 May, 2006: James Love: WIPO carves up the Internet (and the broadcast spectrum)
3 May, 2006: “North- South Division at WIPO Broadcasting Rights Meeting” by SUNS
2 May, 2006: IP Justice: “WIPO Debates Fate of Treaty on Broadcasting & Webcasting”
IP Justice Media Release ~ 2 May 2006
Contact: Robin D. Gross, IP Justice Executive Director
Telephone: +1.415.553.6261
Email: robin@ipjustice.org
WIPO Debates Fate of Treaty on Broadcasting and Webcasting:
Controversial Provisions Remain in Treaty Draft Over Majority Objections
(Geneva) IP Justice is in Geneva to participate at the 14th session of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and ...
1 May, 2006: IP Justice Opinion-Editorial in “IP-Watch” on the Proposed WIPO Broadcasting Treaty
1 May, 2006: IP Justice’s “Top 10 Reasons to Reject the WIPO Broadcasting Treaty” (rev.2)
This document also available in Word .doc format
Top 10 Reasons to Reject the WIPO Basic Draft Proposal for a Broadcasting Treaty
May 2006
1. Eliminates the public domain for audio and video programming.
The WIPO copyright committee’s ...
1 May, 2006: IP Justice Statement to the 14th Session of the WIPO Copyright Committee (SCCR)
IP JUSTICE STATEMENT
Regarding a Proposal for a Broadcasting Treaty
at the 14th Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on
Copyrights and Related Right...
- View all entries under 14 SCCR May 2006
