The plan being opposed is a new broadcast treaty from UN agency
the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Called the
Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting
Organisations, it creates a new class of IP rights designed to
protect broadcasters from the theft of their TV signals.
"Creating broad new intellectual property rights in order to
protect broadcast signals is misguided and unnecessary and risks
serious unintended negative consequences," says a protest document
signed by the technology companies and a range of other firms and
public bodies. The protest is being co-ordinated by digital rights
activist group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The treaty is designed to help combat what WIPO says is a
growing problem of cross-border signal piracy, where a channel
shown in one country is re-broadcast in another without permission.
Opponents, including other collections of interest groups such as
podcasters and internet broadcasters, claim that the wording of the
treaty may give broadcasters wide-ranging rights over internet
content.
Dean Whitbread is the chairman of the UK Podcasters'
Association. "We don't mind regulation, we just want it to be
reasonable," Whitbread previously told OUT-LAW. "Podcasting and
broadcasting are not the same. I don't think as podcasters we
should be subject to the same legislation."
"The current treaty draft includes protection for Internet
simulcasts made by traditional broadcasters and cablecasters, but
otherwise excludes computer networks from its scope," says the
protest document from the EFF coalition. "To the extent that the
treaty continues to take a rights-based approach rather than a
signal-theft-based approach, we oppose the treaty’s application to
the internet."
A WIPO statement regarding the treaty said: "Updating the IP
rights of broadcasters currently provided by the 1961 Rome
Convention began at WIPO in 1997. A growing signal piracy problem
in many parts of the world, including piracy of digitised
pre-broadcast signals, has made this need more acute."
The latest draft of the treaty will be considered at a WIPO
meeting in Geneva next week.
