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.

Comments

Also see

[JamesD_UK]

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.

What the treaty actually says...

[AaronGTurner]

It gives broadcasters the option to copyright their particular transmission of a work. They do not gain any retereospective copyright over works in the public domain as a whole, simply their transmission of it.

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.

Re:I get it now

[Fulcrum of Evil]

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.