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WIPO Creating New IP Rights Over Web Content
An anonymous reader writes "The WIPO is currently engaged in negotiating a new treaty on digital IP rights, but they're having trouble agreeing on the particulars. Though the world of YouTube and podcasts seems like a place that 'requires' laws, the WIPO seems confused about what to do about it. From the article: 'The proliferation of low cost video cameras and editing software, higher bandwidth cable, satellite and Internet connections, are creating a highly diverse and dynamic environment for creating, distributing, redistributing and remixing information. To this exciting world the UN's specialized agency for intellectual property wants to impose a new legal regime. The problem is, no one here has a clue what the legal regime should look like.' The U.S. is also pushing for reviving a 1962 treaty (never ratified) that would give the large cable distributors (like Discovery, Sci-fi, Spike, etc) ownership of even public domain content if they carry it. This would be in addition to any rights normally afforded the distributors. "
The only IP right that is real would be the right to copy. The right to copy and use ideas, information, and invention that comes our way freely without fraud or coercion. This right is just like the right to free religion, the right to free speech, or the right to choose our employers rather than to be slaves.
There are also dutys, like the duty to call copyrights and patents what they are: a fraud, a lie, and not a property right. Like the duty to call "piracy" what it is: the boarding of a ship and murdering people and not copying. Like the duty to call them controls rather than incentive or protection. Like the duty to bypass and defy people who try to control our liberties via controlling the information we have or via telling us how we must use it.
Finally, there are other things that are just human nature, like sharing music and information and ideas freely with the world around us.
Lets just face it, the WIPO are WhImPO's and are against free markets and property rights, not for them.
Owning public domain content because you show it is like owning some air because you once exhaled it.
Better start paying Cesar royalties.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Uhm, no, regular copyright laws cover it quite well. Specialized laws are not required. Particularly, the US effort to revive a dead treaty which would allow big corporate entities to rope off bits of the public domain simply becaue they used it is not necessary (and, anyway, something the US could not Constitutionally adhere to since it exceeds, quite clearly, the Constitutional power of the US government as regards IP, since it would extend IP rights to someone who is not the creator of work, and that do not arise because of a relationship with the creator.)
Does this mean the material is no longer public domain?
I can't imagine that would work... since anyone could go back to the original source material and use that.
Or is this just an attempt to put public proceedings (Senate/Congress sessions for example) into private hands?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Is Intellectual Property a Crime?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If YouTube, et al have done anything, it's show that a different business model can work: the value is not in production of the material, it's in delivering it.
Previously, if I had wanted lame videos of punk skateboarders doing tricks, angsty teenagers venting their mixed-up feelings, middle-age housewives boody-popping, etc. I would have had to spend countless hours trolling the murky depths and dark recesses of the Internet to find them. Thanks to YouTube, I have a single, convenient place to satisfy my disgusting and perverse needs.
Seriously though, can we please stop trying to create artificial scarcity? We don't really need it; TV shows, movies, and music worth paying for are already scarce enough.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
while almost everyone thinks its just fine for me to loan a friend a rented DVD before I return it, there are those that think if I share a video on the Internet it should be regulated, taxed, or scrutinized against IP and copyright laws.
.. well, they are fscked. No, I don't have a ready example of how to fix them all. I do know that simply wanting to fix things will not do so. Any regulations placed on Internet based services will not work if they fail to pass the 'basic human morals' test.
The Internet has changed the world in many significant ways, but it has not changed basic human morals, and won't. I see nothing wrong with sharing things with others, and any regulatory body that wants to change that will find me looking for, and finding, other ways to do so.
Copyright and IP law as they currently are implemented
Lets say someone in highschool in Chicago makes some wacky video on their pc, and shares it with friends via CD. There is no way to police this sort of content production.
Now, lets say that they share it with several million of their friends via news groups? Still, not much hope of policing this. Okay, so our content creator now shares it with several million of their friends via YouTube. Suddenly, because of the visibility of the WWW, people think that it should be regulated, scrutinized, and by god, lets punish those evil copyright infringers.
Human behavior has not changed. The thing that changed is that now more people can more quickly see what others are doing. This doesn't mean that there is more infringement necessarily, only that more people can see what they think is infringement.
Regulating the viewing mechanism for that content will not stop its production. Result: This is a broken way to try to fix what was not a problem in the first place.
Additionally, by putting the burden on YouTube, MySpace and others, they are creating a sort of conscripted volunteer police force, which in the end will also fail.
The only way to fix these infringements is to make them legally not infringements. For many of the same reasons that we should not be fighting a war on drugs http://www.leap.org/, we shouldn't be fighting a war on copyright infringement. Those who fight copyright infringements (**AAs) are simply building sandcastles on the beach at low tide.
The UN, or any other body does not have enforcement authority, nor will they, UNLESS they decide to change / repeal the overreaching copyright laws that have to date been enacted.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Ill-advised remakes of things that weren't much good in the first place.. you can just smell Hollywood's influence.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Why is the United States wasting what little good will it has around the world with intellectual property rights issues? Why is the destruction of public domain a top priority? I would think that a potentially nuclear Iran, the Iraq war and global terrorism would take up the time of the diplomats. Are government officials being bought off with cash or sexual favors from aspiring actresses? If the air conditioning/ home heating industry lobbied for international regulations that every building in the world would have to be maintained at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, it would be crazy. I guess public domain now means "Ready to be taken into the possession of a large corporation".
My guess is that government regulators don't understand what's going on. They receive their money/blowjobs from the content industry and do as they are told.
UN's specialized agency for intellectual property wants to impose a new legal regime
I, for one, like living in a society ruled by laws rather than the whims of men. If by 'legal regime' the author means a legal structure in which to resolve disputes, I am all for it. After all, disputes will happen and the law should provide a means to deal with them in a civilized and fair manner. By referring to an attempt to codify our values as a regime we indicate that we are no longer willing to participate in this discourse and abdicate any power we might have to influence the outcome in a way beneficial to us. We shouldn't focus on the fact that there will be laws that may limit what we can do when interacting with other people, but should remember that laws have their uses and abuses and we should try to participate in the process. If we don't I guarantee to you that someone will and that their interests will be considered with a weight proportional to the energy and money they invested in the process. As individuals and groups without great political and economic resources we shouldn't turn out backs on the very idea of law, it's all we have.
...when there are already plenty laws, and no chance in hell to enforce them. There's something like 60 million people in the US (200 million worldwide) that's been using file sharing. At that point it gets sort of like prohibition - it's easy to show alcohol is linked to violence, crime, drunk driving, alcoholism and poor health effects. Yet so many want to do it, it's so easy to produce that what you'd have to go through to stop it, would be much worse if at all possible.
People today are able to send incredible amounts of information to each other through ad hoc networks of various kinds, the only way to make any serious impact on that would be to create some sort of totalitarian central sharing system staffed with vast amounts of mpaa/riaa goons and real penalties for end users. Anything else... well, it looks good on paper but what would you do? Throw 60mio people in jail? Even with the rabid sentences in the US, I think it's only about 3%.. 20% would be beyond insane.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Did the author even read the article, or is his knee twitching after a cursory skim-over?
Anonymous Reader said: The U.S. is also pushing for reviving a 1962 treaty (never ratified) that would give the large cable distributors (like Discovery, Sci-fi, Spike, etc) ownership of even public domain content if they carry it.
The actual article said: One faction in the negotiations wants to revamp provisions in a 1961 treaty (one that the United States and 80 other countries never signed), with new or expanded intellectual property rights for anyone who "broadcasts" third party content.
Yes giving ownership of public domain content would be insane, but from the article I don't see the U.S.A. proposing that (and apparently they didn't like it in 1961 either).
According to http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/a2k/2007-Janu ary/001971.html
(linked from the article), the U.S.A. is apaprently in favor of the
narrower signal-based treaty that does NOT give exclusive rights to
broadcasters.
If you can't find a way to protect your house from thieves, then "tough titty" for you. You deserve to be robbed.
By the way, where was the CPU in your computer made?
Now, it is generally agreed that distribution of information is generally desirable. Copyright is based on a view that giving creators control of their creation is generally desirable. You may disagree with these, but that's somethign of a radical viewpoint. I'm going from what is pretty much prevailing wisdom. Not much has changed in copyright media for the past 50 years. There are more media types available, but the entire production and distribution of a DVD or a piece of software is not fundamentally different from the production and distribution of a novel or a vinyl record. Likewise, a satellite transmission, is not fundamentally different from a longwave audio broadcast.
What has changed more recently is ease of copying. But video and audio data have been easily copyable for decades. Copyright law has presumably dealt with this adequately. We still have a large industry based on copyrighted works so we canpresume that this has been dealt with adequately.
So the only substantial change has been that it's now a lot easier to distribute information, and a lot easier to store it
I can send a movie file to hundreds of people with easily purchased consumer equipment. By my earlier arguments this is a good thing - "distribution of information is generally desirable". It's also a bad thing "giving creators control of their creation is generally desirable".
So what the law needs to do is find a balance. The law is already taking into account the control aspect. Everything that is likely to need to be protected already is. But there are a lot of restrictions on distribution and archiving. One might argue too many. Countless works have been lost because preserving a copy has been seen as not financially viable for the owners and illegal for others. Copyright holders are hoarding information that is no longer seen as saleable, and could be shared freely at no loss to anyone. Society would become richer as a result. The law needs to be changed to account for this. Screw your right to share Pirates of the Caribbean on bittorrent. That's not important. What is important is making more information available to the world.