New IP Treaty Looming?

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article by James Boyle in the Financial Times, the United States is helping push a Treaty that would create an entirely new type of intellectual property right in the US, in addition to copyright, covering anything that is broadcast or webcast. (Regardless of whether the work was in the public domain, Creative Commons Licensed etc, the broadcaster would control any copies made from the broadcast for 50 years.) Boyle argues that this is dumb, unconstitutional, and anyway should be debated domestically first."

Comments

Re:Unconstitutional?

[Vancorps]

The constitution doesn't give us rights, its restricts what government can do. This is something that's been lost on most people for some reason. By default we're allowed to do whatever we want. The constiution merely says the government can do this to stop you because your freedom is interfering with the freedom of another citizen. That is the judge of whether something is constitutional or not.

Granted, I have not done an in-depth study of the constitution either, that was just how I was taught about it in school.

Of course, just because something isn't constitution doesn't mean it won't happen anyways.