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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.
Rob's Rule of Misgovernment: "When idiots write the law, the law will be idiotic."
Perhaps you have noticed that most broadcasters are super imposing their logos and other copyrighted images on your screen. That logo effectively stamps the film that they are broadcasting. They own the logo. You can't copy or distribute that logo without their permission. Therefore, you can't use the film in the background without their permission either.
I'd guess that the MPAA might disagree with the notion of a broadcaster acquiring ownership of a feature film, simply because he broadcast it one night.
Europe seems determined to do away with property rights altogether.
--- Bill
This does suggest that there is anything in the public domain that anyone would want to broadcast.
Considering the vast majority of the public domain is targetted at an audience who were around 95 years ago, and is likely to be highly degraded, or even non-existant, this sounds like a largely academic objetion.
Is there a list of 10 reasons to support this? I would like to read what they have to say and make up my mind. Some of the 10 reasons offered up by ipjustice look specious at best. I just want to be able to make up my own mind about this.
Unfortunately, there's nothing more mind-numbing than international law, particularly regarding intellectual property rights. A cursory read of the linked articles had me praying for death. Can someone objective sum up the issues and present them here, in colloquial English. Thanks. And dear God please no more acronyms.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Peace
Read the list. Go. Now. Look at #10.
The proposed treaty would grant broadcasters the right to stop the original creators from otherwise distributing their work!
That, mes amis, is WRONG.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
.. it never ends, agenda 21, the desertification treaty,small arms, abuses by UN troops, issuing bogus vaccines, it never ends, now this amalgamation of bad news
"Article 6 - Right of Retransmission
Article 6 provides broadcasting organizations with an exclusive right to authorize the retransmission by any means of their broadcasts. The phrase "by any means" creates a dangerously broad grant of control over all retransmissions, including rebroadcasting and retransmission by wire, cable, or even over computer networks. This grant is broad enough to include a consumer who is sending a public domain movie through the Internet for non-commercial purposes. By including the redistribution through the Internet of broadcast media, the proposal goes well beyond its stated goal of applying to broadcasting organizations and regulates an enormous breadth of ordinary consumer activity, endangering freedom of expression on the Internet.
And this grant would give the traditional broadcasting industry a competitive advantage over webcasters and other "new-media" retransmitters who discover new and innovative ways of providing entertainment to consumers but will be prevented from doing so because this broad grant forecloses all future means of redistribution that is yet to be discovered.
Article 6 also provides broadcasting organizations with higher levels of protection over broadcasts than the law gives to the actual creators of the content being broadcast. Canada proposed a reservation to Article 6 out of concern that it creates "a situation where the level of protection of broadcasts would exceed the rights of the rightsholders of the content being broadcast."
further down it mentions an ubercopyright-like experience giveing broadcasters 50 years of ownership which *could* be construed to over rule even the original copyright! What masterminds thunked this up?
If that ain't sucky or what! Wonder how much them bozos got paid off for THIS masterpiece!
UN=somewhat decent idea, abysmal implementation, more stoopid and corrupt than most nations out there. Scrap it, start over again, IMO. And put their headquarters over to boogorillaville someplace, NOT inside the US. Let them goombahs enjoy the ambience someplace else.
It can't be done, "global government" would be orders of magnitude even more inefficient and more corrrupt than the soverign nations it wants to replace. We don't need either flavor of NWO, not the corporate axis of profit brand, nor the "stealth" axis of profit brand represented by the UN.
Probably a troll...but what the hell, I'll assume it's a real question...
But, to get back to the original point, I find it highly unnerving that the country that claims to be the world's foremost democracy holds democratic ideals in such low regard. If the majority of countries decides one thing, why does the US so often do the exact opposite?
Answer: Because we (I say "we" as in "Americans", since I'm one) are not citizens of the world, despite what progressives would like to think. We do not answer to a world government -- such a thing does not exist, although there's a club that we're members of called the UN, which has done things like electing the Sudan to the UN Human Rights Committee. We answer to the United States of America, and its Constitution is the final authority unless we decide to amend it (that's why they call it a free country).
There are many good reasons for this; for one thing, it means that pissants on the other side of the world don't get to tell us what to do. In fact, originally the law was set up to ensure that not even the folks in Washington, DC could tell us what to do in most cases. The federal government became more powerful over time, but every now and then states' rights get asserted (John Ashcroft getting rebuked by the courts for his attempt to shut down the Oregon assisted-suicide legalization is a prime, recent example).
The US was formed on the principle of self-determination, and that means that we do not have to accede to the rules of another country if they violate our laws (i.e. the Constitution). Which, judging from the article, is a good thing. Europeans are always giving Americans a hard time about how we're so corporate-friendly, but I don't see much difference myself; if anything, it seems like the EU and UK governments are trying to outdo us in bending over and grabbing the socks for the Arrr Aye Double A.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
Of course, I don't know when in recent history they started to consider treaties such as the International Court in effect just because a portion of the signers ratified it. I'm fairly certain that's pretty new to history because it wasn't long ago that most treaties were bilateral, or only included a handful of signers. Nevertheless, the US has avoided most of those recent treaties, including the International Court, so I don't think we have had to confront a treaty we signed being presumed to be in effect and including us even though we didn't ratify it, yet.
Still, the treaty is not International law. It is merely an agreement by the countries that ratify it. Countries break treaties. That's may not be good diplomacy, but in thousands of years of history, it was never considered an International law violation. Usually, in bilateral treaties, it simply meant that the treaty was no longer in effect for either country. In other words, a treaty is like a cease fire, and breaking it usually just meant that the cease fire was over or no longer necessary. The US broke a treaty with the former Soviet Union because times changed, and Russia is no longer our primary concern for missile defense.
Open Standards Portal
That this is the first step in re-creating the old guild system of the middle ages?
The net effect of all these laws and treaties is to eliminate the public domain and force all of us into a pay-per-listen kind of license?
All under the guise of "protecting the musician".
I wonder who is stupid enough to fall for it. I mean, besides congress.
Does anybody think anything created by any committee of the United Nations would actually have our best interests at heart?
(Mod me Troll is you must, but at least give some good example to back up your opinion.)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What benifit does this give to the broadcasters?
The source material will be lying safely in a safe, somewhere. The owner is not in any way required to give me access to it. This effectively stops my ability to access the public domain work through this route.
Of course, any other copies will now be covered with copyright! In the past I could grab _any_ copy of the work, and do with it whatever I like. Now I cannot get any of the second-tier copies, and the chances of the original source material being available are negligible.
Effectively, this creates an eternal copyright. All that is needed to maintain it is to carefully lock up the original source material.
It could be argued that I could tape whatever I wanted to have, wait 50 years, and _then_ use it. This is both extremely impractical and, in combination with technical restrictions on taping things, unfeasible as well.