Geneva, Dec 5 (AFP) - A US consumer group Thursday hit out at sweeping copyright treaties being thrashed out in Geneva, saying they are an assault on privacy and their authors incompetent and ignorant about the technology they are dealing with.

The draft treaties-governing literary and artistic works, the rights of performers and music producers and database protection-are being brainstormed at the World Intellectual Copyright conference (WIPO) which is aiming to tighten protection against information age instruments. The conference opened December 2 and runs to December 20.

"It is our contention that at this diplomatic conference, the people who drafted these treaties -and lots of people will be voting on them-don't know what they're doing," said James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, part of the Center for Study of Responsive Law in Washington.

"They are basically incompetent, they don't understand the technology and have not heard from enough people to understand the damage they are trying to do to the information economy."

"We think that these treaties are a total assault on privacy and all privacy groups active on Internet are in accord on this point."

The controversial WIPO database proposal, pushed by big publishing companies, seeks to put ownership on facts, which have traditionally been public domain information available to anybody.

"The idea that people should put property rights on facts to protect databases is extremely na‹ve. Traditionally we have always protected expression, but not factual information itself," said Love.

In practice, he said, it would mean that stock prices and quotes, now disseminated freely, would be owned by stock exchanges and subject to license. Another example: newspapers would need to get permission from professional sports leagues to print sports statistics.

"The database treaty is so poorly written that most of the big data base companies in the US oppose it," said Love, adding that it was not about protecting databases "but making it impossible to create a database."

Though the US Government is behind the treaties, there is large-scale domestic opposition, primarily from fortune 500 computer firms and academic and research communities.

"These are the people that recognize the damage the treaties will cause. They are the most sophisticated about information technologies."

Treaty supporters include international record company interests and hollywood production outfits.

The US Congress has never held a public hearing on the database proposal, and almost no one in the US government has a clue as to what it actually does, the lobby group said in a statement.

Europe has passed a database directory but no country has implemented it for fear of causing a "meltdown" in their domestic information industry.

"No one that used the Internet or understood the Internet would propose strict rules making copies of random access memory or temporary cache copies of documents a presumed infringement of copyright," said the lobby.

It accused the treaty authors of wanting to make the Internet service providers, who offer online connections to the public, the "judge and jury" of international copyright violations which would trample on citizens' legal rights.

Copyright already exists on the Internet, Love said, and "no treaty is necessary. Copyright law is more robust in solving these problems."