Broadcast Treaty Said Headed Toward Protections for Internet-Related TV Services
Talks on an updated treaty to protect broadcast signals appear to have moved beyond consideration of strictly traditional broadcast and cablecast services to those available now and in the future via different technologies, broadcast officials said during last week’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) committee meeting in Geneva. Discussions on the treaty text (http://bit.ly/1nPuvGl) so far have been based on old technologies, but broadcasters want to focus on what they do today and will be doing in the near future, a broadcast official said in an interview. Broadcasters want to make clear that today’s technology and the Internet-connected TV of tomorrow -- including simulcast transmissions and catch-up services -- should be included in the treaty, the source said. Civil society groups said covering Internet-related activities would only add more complexity and harm users.
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TV stations are increasingly offering apps for streaming channels, catch-up services and different time delays, a broadcasting official noted. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) showed that there are more than 1,000 catch-up services in Europe, and broadcasters need copyright protection for them, he said.
Another topic at the meeting was which signals should be protected, said a broadcast official. There is a large consensus that third-party simulcasts of programming over the Internet should be covered, but other kinds of transmissions based on fixation of a signal, such as delayed transmissions that a third party posts, should also be covered, the source said. The “coverage of transmissions from fixations” is a new phrase in the talks, a broadcaster official said.
Although formal conclusions from the SCCR meeting won’t be completed until after our deadline, an NAB source said earlier in the week that “we welcome the progress made at WIPO this week” on the treaty. NAB commended SCCR Chairman Martin Moscoso from Peru and many of the national delegations “for their efforts to consolidate and narrow the remaining issues in preparation for a diplomatic conference."
Besides the NAB and EBU, a new broadcaster group was at the SCCR meeting. The Ibero-American Broadcasters for Intellectual Property (ARIPI), launched in September 2011 to “improve and strengthen the intellectual property rights available to broadcasting organizations,” it said. Member companies come from 18 countries.
The U.S. has suggested proposals for possible ways forward to narrow the scope of rights under discussion and find a targeted approach everyone can potentially accept, a U.S. government source said. In December, it proposed as a discussion point a single right protecting simultaneous or near-simultaneous retransmission of a signal to the public, she said. The U.S. is “heartened” that several countries have expressed interest in considering that approach, she said. But there is “tremendous confusion” about how broadcasters use digital technology, and more clarity is needed about what they are doing and how signals could be protected against piracy, she said.
U.K. ‘Supportive'
The U.K., along with many other EU countries, “has been supportive of a treaty protecting broadcasting organisations for many years and has made this clear within the EU,” said a U.K. Intellectual Property Office spokeswoman in a statement. The government deems it important to take into account advances in the technology used in broadcasting so the treaty works properly, she said.
But the push for greater rights for broadcasters could backfire, said Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) Director James Love. EU-based broadcasters “are now pushing for all sorts of new rights for web based operations,” he said in an email. “This will reduce the likelihood of moving” to a diplomatic conference, he said.
In comments to the SCCR, KEI said it opposes the treaty for several reasons. Broadcasting organizations have failed to explain the problem the agreement is intended to address and how the proposed text is related to that problem, it said. If the issue is piracy of content that’s broadcast, copyright law should be sufficient protection, it said. In addition, there is considerable evidence that signal piracy can be and is addressed via existing copyright laws, it said.
The broadcast treaty is “an unidentified flying object that has been buzzing around this room for years,” said the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue. It rejected the idea of any new layer of IP rights for broadcasters, saying that would make it more expensive and complex to legally obtain, access and use information. Once delegates figure out exactly what the agreement is supposed to do, WIPO should perform an impact study to show how it will affect consumers, performers and authors, it said.
The current draft also ran into opposition from content creators. The document, as it now stands, threatens to gives broadcasters “rights to prevent certain uses of their signals, including signals that carry only or predominantly recorded music, even though the performers and producers of that music may have no right either to prevent the broadcasters from transmitting their music or to obtain any form of remuneration,” said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Broadcasters “should not be granted rights that are superior to the rights in the content they carry,” said IFPI Executive Vice President-Global Legal Policy David Carson. A treaty that allows broadcasters to prevent certain uses of their signals must also ensure that performers and producers of sound recordings have the right either to stop broadcasters from using their recordings or to seek royalties for the use, he said.
Momentum toward including online broadcasting and cablecasting, but not pure webcasting, signals in the treaty began building at last December’s SCCR meeting (CD Dec 23 p11). The next SCCR meeting is June 30-July 4.