WIPO Treaty Talks Edge Toward Protection of Some Webcasting Signals
Talks on updating broadcasting protections made some progress but no breakthrough at last week's meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, European Broadcasting Union Intellectual Property Head Heijo Ruijsenaars said in an interview Friday. The meeting was helpful because the positions of different delegations on some of the issues became clearer, he said. Pure webcasting signals won't be covered, but divergences between the U.S. and some other delegations over what transmissions will fall within the accord remain unresolved, he said. Absent any conclusions on the issues, SCCR Chairman Martin Moscoso produced a factual summary of the discussion.
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The meeting made "incremental progress," said WIPO Copyright Law Division Director Michele Woods. There was "slow but steady discussion" of key concepts and what is and isn't agreed upon, she said in an interview. Many of the delegations now feel more comfortable about where the talks are now and what decisions have to be made, she said. The next meeting is June 29-July 3, Woods said.
The basis for negotiations remains a March 25 working paper. At the end of the July meeting, delegates appeared headed to agreement on exclusion of pure webcasting signals (see report in the July 9 issue). Several countries have now made clear that broadcasters' signals, whether transmitted via cable, satellite or the Internet, must be protected, said Ruijsenaars. However, it appears "not all regions have a full understanding on the best drafting method to accomplish that approach," he said. The SCCR can only reach a "minimum level" of agreement, with many legal details left to last-minute negotiations, he said. "But a common understanding on this minimum framework is steadily growing within the SCCR, and that is positive progress," said Ruijsenaars.
Movement on the issues was very limited, said EU sources. The same difference of opinion still exists between the U.S., which wants a narrow treaty that covers only simultaneous or near-simultaneous transmissions, and the EU, Japan and others that want a more exhaustive list of rights to be covered, the sources said. The U.K. Intellectual Property Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office didn't comment.
Moscoso's summary said discussions were held on several "non-technical papers" on concept, object of protection and rights to be granted. It said the SCCR had asked the WIPO secretariat to update information in one technical background paper and in a 2010 study on current market and technology trends in the broadcasting sector, with special reference to the ways new digital technologies are used by traditional broadcasting and cablecasting organizations, including in developing and least-developed nations, with the aim of presenting the results of the study for discussion at the next SCCR session. Technical experts, including from developing and least-developed countries, will be invited for a half-day information session to address some of the technical issues considered in the talks, the summary said.
During negotiations, Knowledge Ecology International urged the SCCR to provide protections for free radio and TV signals, not pay services. KEI Director James Love said in a blog post that talk of qualifying many activities as broadcasting is "quite problematic." The definition of broadcasting shouldn't be applied to "the kinds of services HULU offers in the United States or a lot of these sort of on-demand service or play lists that we create," he wrote. The treaty shouldn't apply to transmissions made at the time and place of listeners' choice, he said.
The TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue once saw the treaty as an "unidentified flying object" due to its lack of definitions, it said in a statement posted on its intellectual property policy blog. Now that the definitions are becoming clearer, they seem to pose a threat to culture, freedom of speech and the public domain, it said. TACD urged the SCCR to avoid protecting post-fixation rights, and to adopt a very narrow definition of simultaneous or near-simultaneous traditional broadcasting signals to the public over the air.