Slashdot Mirror
WIPO Broadcast Treaty Creates New Legal Rights for Broadcasters
An anonymous reader writes "WIPO (The World Intellectual Property Organization) created by the UN is now creating a new copyright for 'broadcast transmissions' giving broadcasters ownership of the content that they broadcast (even if the program being broadcast is in the public domain). IP Justice has created a Top 10 List of
reasons to reject this proposal and has published a detailed report that dissects the proposal from a civil liberties and freedom of expression point
of view." See our previous story for more information.
See the Union for the Public Domain. We're also working on these issues and have summaries of WIPO proceedings and an analysis of the treaty.
Really this isn't much different from a record company deciding to produce a CD of work so old that it is out of copyright. They would have copyright on the arrangement of bit on the CD, but not on the underlying work. This treaty seems to be an attempt to bring things into line with this, to be honest.
Or alternatively you can take a copy of a Dickens novel and reproduce the words (since they are out of copyright) but you can't simply photocopy a recently printed copy of the novel and distribute that without breaching copyright.
However, international treaty is held to supersede the constitution, thus conveniently bypassing any constitutional protections in place.
In what dreamworld? the constitution is the supreme law. International treaties themselves are just paper - it is only local laws that implement those treaties that hold any force, and they are also subject to the constitution.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I used to think that, but someone corrected me and I did some research.
In reality, treaties are given equal precedence with federal law (in case of conflict, whichever treaty or law was ratified/passed most recently takes priority).
The Constitution has higher precedence than either treaties or federal law.
The bigger problem is that we've gotten very, very sloppy about enforcing the Constitution as written.
DNA just wants to be free...
The WIPO Copyright Treaty was internationally developed back in a time when people, especially politicians, had no grasp of how digital data was an integral part of the modern world. The Internet, and copying of files, was seen as something awfully scary which threatened companies. Old white men fear change, and in 1996 the Internet looked like a pretty wild frontier. WIPO demands that digital data be treated specially, which IMHO is a big mistake. Everything we do these days relies on digital media and copying, an inherent action of computers and networks.
The WIPO was ratified in the United States to create the DMCA, which you all know and love. The similar EU laws, which are just as bent as the US's DMCA, also came from WIPO.
Now Canada is looking at bringing the WIPO, i.e. their own version of the DMCA, into Canadian copyright law. Terrible idea - visit this site if you want to learn more, and exert political pressure to stop this from happening.