WIPO Broadcast Treaty Talks Stall
GENEVA “Minuscule progress” occurred Thurs. toward a new broadcast treaty as WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) was meeting, said a knowledgeable diplomat. After non-govt. entities voiced concerns about the treaty, they were shepherded, along with intergovernmental organizations, from the meeting room as national delegations began negotiating behind closed doors.
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Delegates focused on amending the draft basic proposal, as the WIPO Gen. Assembly (GA) asked, the diplomat said. If agreement comes on clarifying “objectives,” “specific scope,” and “object of protection” based on a signal-based approach, it will kill many options now in a 107-page draft, he said.
That approach has risks -- but far greater risks would result by struggling with a 107-page document, Ben Ivins, NAB Senior Assoc. Gen. Counsel, said. “What we have been asking for is the protection of our broadcast signal, but not content,” Shinichi Uehara, dir. gen.-public affairs at Ashahi Bcstg., said: “Signal protection will not in any way conflict with access to the public domain material or information.” The treaty must “provide broadcasters with tools to prevent free riding,” Ivins said.
“Whilst we remain unconvinced the treaty is necessary at all, and note that no convincing evidence has been presented that new international norms are required in this area, we believe that a focused signal-protection based instrument to prevent signal piracy could be valuable,” USTelecom said. End the rights-based approach, the group said. The treaty should include a provision excluding coverage of transmission or retransmission across a home or personal network, it said, and must ensure that network intermediaries don’t face liability for violations.
“The treaty cannot put broadcasters in the untenable position, for example, of finding a party in another country that is offering its signal on an on-demand basis and be helpless to deal with it,” Ivins said. Technological content protection methods are essential, he said: “This treaty without it… would provide rights without an effective remedy.”
“You have a clear division between the Europeans and the U.S.,” a developing country diplomat said: “The Europeans want a threshold for the signal to be protected… meaning not just any broadcasting organization that transmits a signal containing any sort of programming would be a beneficiary for protection under the treaty, but a broadcasting organization that significantly invests in its programming and transmissions -- there has to be some kind of concept of value added -- that would probably favor an enterprise such as BBC.”
Europeans say that with no threshold, anyone arranging and scheduling programs and putting them on the air would be a beneficiary of the treaty, the diplomat said. That would just create problems, he said: “Even a person who makes footage of a chicken laying an egg and organizes that and puts it in the air and broadcasts it can become a beneficiary for protection. The European view is more protective of the more established traditional broadcasting organizations. I think the U.S. is more flexible. They're concerned about the tech companies. They're concerned about telecoms, which are becoming quasi-broadcasting type organizations.”
If the draft basic proposal is clarified, it will be considered by the next WIPO GA for final approval to convene a diplomatic convention. A 2nd SCCR is set for June. The late session runs until 10 p.m. local time.