Senators Smack Down WIPO Broadcast Treaty

Tighthead writes "Two influential US senators want the US to support a pared-down version of the WIPO Broadcast Treaty that is still being negotiated. In a letter sent to the US delegation, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the ranking Republican member, Arlen Specter, expressed their concerns that the Broadcast Treaty 'would needlessly create a new layer of rights that would disrupt United States copyright law.' They instructed the US delegates to work towards a treaty that is 'significantly narrower in scope, one that would provide no more protection than that necessary to protect the signals of broadcasters.' The next meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee will be in June."

Re:I cant believe this....

[Krinsath]

Actually from reading the article, it appears that they're concerned about adding a layer of rights to the *broadcasters* not to the creators. What they're saying is that US law only recognizes the creators of content, not the distributor (which is in essence what a lot of broadcasters are). There was talk about the treaty giving broadcasters IP rights to public domain works effectively as well as very long protections on broadcasts. From the article: "The Revised Draft Broadcasting Treaty appears to grant broadcasters extensive new, exclusive rights in their transmissions for a term of at least 20 years, regardless of whether they have a right in the content they are transmitting," Those would be the rights they are concerned about adding to the mix, and in this case I can't disagree with them. No, you shouldn't have your signal stolen so that others can profit off of your labor, but similar you should not be able gain rights to something you didn't create in the first place. Imagine if that idea was applied to the Internet...that whoever was simply hosting the content gained any sort of rights to that content for their own sale and redistribution. Somewhat scary to think about there...

Re:Public Domain...

[Microlith]

Congratulations, you just killed Television.

Let's see how many other medium we can destroy by applying your theory.

Re:Thanks.

[Guaranteed]

Not to mention that anything broadcast over public airwaves IS free to pick up right now. For example, I have rabbit ears which I use to pick up CTV, CBC and Global. For FREE! Public airwaves, free content. This certainly hasn't killed CTV, CBC or Global. In fact, the CBC has almost built its success on Hockey Night in Canada being able to reach almost 100% of the Canadian population, whether they can afford private access to cable networks or not.

This is out of his league.

[Kadin2048]

Joking aside, this is far bigger than an "internet issue;" it's a Copyright issue, and that means it's going to affect not only the internet, but virtually all types of media. When people start re-jiggering Copyright, they're manipulating the foundations that underlie (or undermine, depending on your point of view) our shared culture.

The proposed "broadcast copyright" that's being debated by WIPO would be an absolute disaster. It would probably be the most fundamental change in U.S. law since it was first laid down, because it would basically allow for re-copyrighting of a work without any creative input or modification.

Right now, if I take a work and simply reproduce it without any modifications at all, there's no additional copyright added. Thus, a photo-reproduction of an old work, like the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, is still public domain. It's only when I start doing something to it, that it becomes a new work, and subject to another 100+ years of protection. What the draft WIPO treaty would change, is that simply by reproducing/transmitting, a new layer of copyright would be created. So if I "broadcasted" the 1911 Encyclopedia to you, suddenly it wouldn't just have the expired 1911 copyright on it, it would also have my 2007 copyright on the "broadcast."

As long as you kept the originals locked away somewhere, so that the only way people could ever witness them was via a "broadcast," and then you didn't allow them to record or store those broadcasts, you could effectively extend copyright forever.