Union for the Public Domain

The new reporting service, IP Watch has a nice summary story on what's happened so far with the Broadcast Treaty, and what's about to happen.

Law professor Lawrence Lessig has a column in Wired describing how broadcasters wield control over speeches by government officials that should be in the public domain. The proposed WIPO broadcast treaty would strengthen this control. Lessig makes the further point that networks' ability to limit distribution of embarassing moments for politicians gives them an unfair competitive advantage that reinforces media concentration.

The US president owns neither his words nor his image - at least not when he speaks in public on important matters. Anyone is free to use what he says, and the way he says it, to criticize or to praise.... But what happens when the commander in chief uses private venues to deliver public messages, holding fewer press conferences and making more talk-show appearances? Who controls his words and images then?

June 14 PM Edition Techdaily

Talks On Broadcasting Move Ahead Despite Differences
by William New

International negotiators working to craft a treaty on the protection of broadcasters' rights last week agreed to take the talks to the next level at the World Intellectual Property Organization despite deep disagreement over key areas.

Last week's negotiations in Geneva for an international treaty on the rights of broadcasters was aimed at helping address problems of signal piracy, but for consumer groups and others at the event, the debate was about much more than that.

An unprecedented number of nonprofit groups participated in the WIPO meeting, and James Love, the director of the Consumer Project on Technology, said an "unholy alliance" formed among copyright holders, performers and consumer groups in support of a treaty that addresses signal piracy. Broadcasters want another layer of rights to broadcasts that they currently have no right to, the nonprofits said, and that would limit access to information in the public domain.

From June 7-9, WIPO delegates from 90 member states debated whether to extend the powers granted to broadcasters. The treaty as drafted would give broadcasters unprecedented control over material that is in the public domain, cannot be copyrighted, or is available under copyleft-type licences. Our position is that the treaty should be rejected.

The debate took place in the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, and the main question was whether there was enough consensus to pass the broadcast treaty on to the General Assembly for a "Diplomatic Conference." From our point of view there wasn't enough agreement to move forward, and India, Brazil and the African bloc (led by Egypt) held strong on this position.

See below for a full impressionistic transcript of the June 7-9 meeting, written in collaboration with EFF. Elsewhere we have more information about the treaty, including recent coverage, and some short running commentary for Days 1, 2, and 3.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is currently considering an international treaty that would extend the power that broadcasters have to control how we use and record images and sounds, including material in the public domain. This treaty will trade off the public's freedom for additional powers that the broadcasters have not demonstrated are necessary for the public good. Our position is that the treaty should be rejected.

• For recent coverage and analysis of the treaty go here.

• The Union for the Public Domain sent a delegation of four to the June 7-9th WIPO meeting on the treaty, and we have complete coverage here, including some short running commentary for Days 1, 2, and 3.

• Prior to the meeting we asked volunteers to administer a survey to their national governments, but we found that most governments wouldn't publicise their positions on the treaty until the WIPO meeting. You can find a lot of information on national positions in the annotated transcript we co-produced with EFF.

If you would like to volunteer to protect the public domain from this treaty, do e-mail us. To keep up-to-date on the treaty, sign up for our low-traffic e-mail list.

1) The proposed WIPO "Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations" threatens to encroach on the public domain for the following reasons...

[The notes for all three days are available at http://www.public-domain.org/?q=node/view/42.]

Yesterday nearly all of the country delegates expressed major disagreements with the treaty as drafted. Then the NGOs were up in the afternoon and everyone except the broadcasters, including the rights holders, were opposed.

This morning we arrived to find a "Recommendations" document by the chair, with a preamble describing how much agreement there's been! The recommendation got about as close to recommending a diplomatic conference as you can get without doing it explicitly. (See the document below.)

Comprehensive notes on the Day 2 proceedings are now up at EFF!

In the morning many country delegations made statements in opposition to the inclusion of webcasting, and to proposed language that would require all countries to sign on to the WCT and WPPT if they signed on to this broadcasting treaty.

The afternoon was taken up by the statements of non-governmental organisations, including Union for the Public Domain, EFF, the Civil Society Coalition and Public Knowledge. Union for the Public Domain's statement was made by Tatyana Nikiforova in Russian and closely followed our resolution..

The 11th Meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights kicked off with a discussion of a WIPO Database Treaty, and then moved on to the main event: the draft broadcast treaty.

EFF and UPD collaborated on these blow-by-blow notes, written in the same document at the same time using wi-fi, Rendezvous, and SubEthaEdit.

For more information on the Broadcast Treaty, go here. Also check out Cory Doctorow's commentary.

Meeting notes for the 11th meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee
on Copyright and Related Rights, 7 June 2004

These notes were collaboratively written by:

Cory Doctorow, EFF
Wendy Seltzer, EFF
David Tannenbaum, UPD
 

The answers from countries which have answered UPD's survey on the Draft WIPO Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasters are below.

Australia
Denmark
Finland