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Senators Smack Down WIPO Broadcast Treaty
Tighthead writes "Two influential US senators want the US to support a pared-down version of the WIPO Broadcast Treaty that is still being negotiated. In a letter sent to the US delegation, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the ranking Republican member, Arlen Specter, expressed their concerns that the Broadcast Treaty 'would needlessly create a new layer of rights that would disrupt United States copyright law.' They instructed the US delegates to work towards a treaty that is 'significantly narrower in scope, one that would provide no more protection than that necessary to protect the signals of broadcasters.' The next meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee will be in June."
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
'would needlessly create a new layer of rights that would disrupt United States copyright law.'
If that is not the proof all of you need to get a angry mob together to stand in front of the capitol building with torches and pitchforks demanding the heads of these to terrorists I don't know what is.
The fact that these terrorists were ever elected into our government throughly disgusts me.
yes, I am calling them terrorists, they are doing far more harm to the United states than all of the physical terrorists have ever done.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is a little disingenuous to call Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter a Republican.
If you have a problem with U.S. copyright laws, then those are what you should be up in arms about. As for this treaty, it only makes sense that any treaty the U.S. enters into should fit well within the boundaries of current U.S. law.
not citizen rights.
I swear, you terrorists that don't read the article do more damage to slashdot than all of the physical terrorists have ever done.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anything broadcast over the public airwaves (_all_ spectra is a natural public resource, spectrum "auctions" be damned), should be considered to have been placed into the public domain (it has, quite literally, but it should apply legally, also).
That should be the price paid to the public for the licensed, exclusive use of that part of our resource by a private party. They want copyright, fine - just use some private, controlled delivery method.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I thought that treaty-making was a function reserved for the Executive Branch (subject to the "advice and consent" of the Senate; see article II, section 2 of the Constitution). So how can the two senators instruct the US delegation to do anything?
The WIPO Broadcast Treaty is a complex beast.
Thats an understatement.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
The best definition of "Terrorist" I've ever heard was: "The use, or threat of use, of violence to pursue a political, ideological, or religious change when a non-violent option exists."
While the special interest groups and senators behind this bill are a bunch of greedy bastards, they are hardly using a threat of violence to achieve their goal.
The Bush administration on the other hand has used violence and the continued threat of violence ("fighting over there so we don't have to fight over here") to increase the power of the executive branch.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If I'm alone in this, but can we not act as if everything is a wrestling fight? They didn't "smack" anything down, and in fact the wording the article itself uses is "expressed concern."
Same goes to "blast." If I wanted to read sensationalist crap, I'd turn on fox. Let's not have any of that here!
Relax I just want some peanuts.
"Congratulations, you just killed Television."
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Seriously, TV started and grew into a major industry based entirely upon the revenue of advertisements. There's a lot of early TV (and radio) content which is simply unavailable today, either because the technology didn't exist to record it, or because it was wasn't considered worth keeping. It had already been paid for, and generated profit, upon initial broadcast.
Your implied argument lacks merit.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If the Congress passes a law that encroaches on American's Constitutional rights, the courts can nullify the law by the doctrine of judicial review. Are Americans similarly protected against treaties whose enforcement within our border would violate our Constitutional rights?
If so, does the court get to nullify the whole treaty, or just its local enforcement?
Not sure where you're going with that one. As for getting the Taliban out of Afghanistan, there really wasn't a good non-violent option, thus it was a traditional war. In the case of Saddam however, it's a little fuzzier. Saddam was so heavily sanctioned and monitored, it's not like he had any power to commit the same atrocities as he had in the past. He wasn't an international threat. And the people of his country, albeit stifled, lived in relative peace with one another. So if the goal was to remove Saddam for a position where he created a threat outside (or even within) his borders, we had already accomplished that. If the goal was to convert Iraq to a Democracy, then the non-violent option was simple: Patience. Wait it out, Saddam would eventually grow old and step down or die. Years of careful negotiations and marketing to make Iraq a more west-friendly nation would likely lead to a more liberal leader, and eventually the founding of a democratically elected government.
In either case, if our goal was to instill peace, prosperity, and democracy in foreign countries, there are some other nations who could have actually used our help. Somalia, Uganda, Congo... There are war torn countries across the world we mass Genocide is being actively perused and the US is wasting time, resources, and lives on disposing of a has been dictator who was already castrated.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
...that the protection of copyright in this case seeks to keep rights with the creators and away from the distributors? I mean, considering that the rights to most of what is broadcast belong almost exclusively to another level of distributor, and not to the original creators?
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
n/t
I've never understood the argument that the "airwaves," the radio portion of the EM spectrum, a public resource, therefore government-owned and controlled. You can transmit many radio signals at once in the same place without interference -- especially with modern frequency-hopping tech -- yet you can't easily have many people transmitting "signals" by sound waves in the same area, at once, without interference. Since the air is considered a public resource, isn't there at least as strong a case for government regulation of audio as for its control of radio?
Revive the Constitution.
Joking aside, this is far bigger than an "internet issue;" it's a Copyright issue, and that means it's going to affect not only the internet, but virtually all types of media. When people start re-jiggering Copyright, they're manipulating the foundations that underlie (or undermine, depending on your point of view) our shared culture.
The proposed "broadcast copyright" that's being debated by WIPO would be an absolute disaster. It would probably be the most fundamental change in U.S. law since it was first laid down, because it would basically allow for re-copyrighting of a work without any creative input or modification.
Right now, if I take a work and simply reproduce it without any modifications at all, there's no additional copyright added. Thus, a photo-reproduction of an old work, like the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, is still public domain. It's only when I start doing something to it, that it becomes a new work, and subject to another 100+ years of protection. What the draft WIPO treaty would change, is that simply by reproducing/transmitting, a new layer of copyright would be created. So if I "broadcasted" the 1911 Encyclopedia to you, suddenly it wouldn't just have the expired 1911 copyright on it, it would also have my 2007 copyright on the "broadcast."
As long as you kept the originals locked away somewhere, so that the only way people could ever witness them was via a "broadcast," and then you didn't allow them to record or store those broadcasts, you could effectively extend copyright forever.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The article indicates they don't want _broadcasters_ to have new rights over content.
I agree with your assessment of the situation that would ensue. But I think the net effect (pun intended) would basically be that a whole new generation of creators use CC or other sharing-friendly licenses for their work. Also, these creators would more-or-less *only be looking to free culture for input material -- it just wouldn't be worth the legal wrangling to figure out how one can use/remix/etc. a conventionally-copyrighted work.
Since we're talking about big pictures, I could see a real "fork" developing between those who cling to the old ways and those who embrace net mentality. Since I'm a free-culture advocate, I suspect the latter would outperform the former and become dominant (this is a 30-40 year process)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Let me get this straight...
A republican senator from the USA, is using US copyright law to strike down a worldwide trade treaty brought to WIPO that would give too much power to larger corporations and those with means in a not only easily abused draft but as well as an unethical transfer of rights away from the creators of original works...
I think Hell just froze over O_o
Not necessarily. It would just mean that you'd need to pay for the cost of creating programming during it's first run on TV, and you couldn't resell the same show multiple times. Which actually is how most TV works (well, worked; DVD sales are bigger and bigger now).
The way TV is traditionally paid for, is that the stations sell advertising time, and then they pay the networks (well, actually the networks themselves sell a lot of advertising directly; the locals only get to sell some of a program's ads), and then the network buys the programming from a studio, or produces it itself.
So, for instance, even if the Super Bowl or "24" went immediately into the public domain as they were broadcast, they'd still get on TV, because they make a killing just in their first run. It's the advertising shown during their first broadcast that pays for their creation; any subsequent revenues are just additional profit.
Now, it would certainly change the landscape of television, but it wouldn't "kill TV" outright. The business models which currently operate would have to change dramatically, but there's still a lot of money to be made in entertainment. As long as that demand exists, and people are willing to pay money for it, someone will meet the demand.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Radio waves.... they go INTO your body.
If the air space within my sinuses is not my property....
Then I'm scared.
Stew
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
According to the US Constitution, international treaties may not be subrogated by the Congress, which includes the Senate, once affirmed and signed.
Too late.
Now, if WIPO decides that US patent law and copyright law - as well as DCMA - have gotten out of hand - that's called justice.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Why is there no mention that Patrick Leahy is the leading Democrat and, more importantly, head of the Judiciary Committee, but the party and "rank" of Arlen Specter is mentioned?
Not that I have any particular respect or admiration for either guy; they're both blowhards who are somewhat guaranteed their seats as long as they choose to run. (Like most of the more irritating Senators, including that douche Hollings who basically had his nose up the RIAA/MPAA's collective asses, and that toady Orrin Hatch.)
Come now, do you really think that WIPO -- the World Intellectual Property Organization -- is going to do anything to weaken copyrights and patents?
-- Alastair
Come now, do you really think that WIPO -- the World Intellectual Property Organization -- is going to do anything to weaken copyrights and patents?
...
One can always dream. And since they don't like the US much nowadays, one has more hope than usual
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Article II section 2:
[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur
Treaty-making is a power of the President, as long as 2/3 of Senators consent to the result. Giving advice (or withholding consent) is a power of the Senate. The House of Representatives is not involved in any manner.
Article III s. 2 requires that the Supreme Court and inferior courts must enforce Treaties entered into per II.2
Article VI. makes State statutes and State Constitutions inferior to Treaties entered into per II.2
Article I. s 10. forbids States from entering into Treaties.
Subrogation -- the substitution of one party for another with respect to rights in a legal action, debt collection or insurance claim -- does not come into it. I'm not even sure if you meant to use the word, since the legal concept does not fit the Constitution in any fashion.
Did you have any particular reason to use this legal term here?
Oh. It's also DMCA, not DCMA.
In short: the Senate is exercising its power in giving advice on treaty-making, and is threatening to not use its power of consent if the advice is ignored. Without the consent of the Senate, the President cannot make the treaty. This is natural and normal, especially when the Senate majority and the President are of different parties.
While there might be some sort of "forking" as a result of this, and I also consider myself a fan of the free-culture movement, I'm not sure that I think it's even close to acceptable to basically write off our entire culture prior to today. Because that's pretty much what it would come down to: the "public domain" as we know it would disappear, probably bought up at great cost by people who wanted to horde it and dole it out as 'broadcasts.' Just think: if you could round up all the extant copies of something, no matter how old, you'd own that work -- forever. Disney and Time Warner would be paying people to steal books out of libraries and burn them, just to keep the monopoly on old folk tales.
You'd basically be starting everything off from a blank slate, or what little of our culture are in widely-distributed repositories that can't be destroyed by people with vast amounts of treasure to spend on it, and I don't think that's exactly a bright idea. Culture builds on what comes before it; if you have to "reboot" the whole thing under Creative Commons licenses, that's a whole lot of development to just throw away.
Plus, what makes you think that they won't just eliminate the whole free culture movement via politics and technology? All you'd need to do was legislate a system into being that prevented "display devices" (TVs, computer monitors, etc.) from playing anything that wasn't encrypted -- to prevent piracy and porn here in the U.S.; "hate speech" in Europe, naturally -- and suddenly you'd just not be able to view anything that didn't come from a major studio. Or they'd get Comcast and the telcos on board, and refuse to push any video content over the networks that wasn't authorized (and they'd just block end-to-end encrypted traffic, in favor of schemes that involve a centralized peer to snoop -- easier for the feds to wiretap that way anyway): suddenly 'free culture' is a lot of underground newspapers and tape swapping, not too impressive in the days when "legit" movies will be available at the push of a button.
Power breeds more power; if we allow the media companies to stomp out public domain, that will only give them more, and from there, it will put them in a position to consolidate and continue to move forward. To me, that whole future looks pretty grim.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."