WIPO broadcast treaty defeated by web activists<\/a><\/span>
By OUT-LAW.COM
Published Monday 2nd July 2007 09:57 GMT<\/p>\nA controversial new intellectual property right due to be created by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has been successfully opposed by a coalition of web activists and the technology industry.<\/p>\n
WIPO has spent nearly 10 years gathering international agreement over a new deal for broadcasters which would give them intellectual property rights over broadcasts which would exist in addition to existing copyright laws.<\/p>\n
….<\/p>\n
At the end of the meeting, though, there was not enough agreement between member nations about the proposal and the committee recommended that the proposal not be forwarded to a diplomatic conference for adoption.<\/p>\n
Gwen Hinze is the international affairs director for the EFF. She told weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio about the opposition to the plans.<\/p>\n
“If you create a new layer of rights that sit on top of copyright from a consumer’s point of view that raises questions about access to information, so information that might otherwise be in the public domain as a matter of copyright law, the exceptions and limitations wouldn’t apply and that raises some concerns about access to knowledge,” said Hinze.<\/p>\n
Podcasters were worried that the new right would affect material they produced and their ability to disseminate it on their own terms. One and a half thousand of them signed an EFF open letter to WIPO protesting against the move.<\/p>\n
Consumer electronics companies also protested because the plan contained technological protection measures which they feared could give broadcasters control over television recording equipment, such as TiVO boxes.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Opponents agree that television signal piracy is a problem that must be solved, but say that it can be solved with a ‘signals based approach’ rather than by creating an entire new intellectual property right.<\/p>\n
….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As always, I do not agree to the term intellectual property. It does not exists. There is simply a limited exclusive license in order to promote the useful arts and sciences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Basically, the question is about rebroadcast of over the air and cable signals on the Internet across international boundaries. The broadcasters were trying to use this as a way to generate additional, and undeserved, profits, by creating a new “right”. WIPO broadcast treaty defeated by web activistsBy OUT-LAW.COMPublished Monday 2nd July 2007 09:57 GMT A …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-ip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}