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Broadcast Treaty dies at WIPO |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Saturday, 23 June 2007 |
 According to ars technica , the WIPO Broadcast Treaty appears to be dead.
The Broadcast Treaty was an attempt to
give global broadcasters the tools they needed to stop the theft of their
signals, but initial versions of the treaty (which has been under discussion for
a decade) adopted a controversial "rights-based" approach. Under a rights-based
treaty, broadcasters would receive new intellectual property rights over their
signals, and consumer advocates worried that this could put an end to some
things currently allowed under "fair use."
Here's the issue: if NBC broadcasts a Creative Commons-licensed video, it could
be illegal for users to record and redistribute that particular
broadcast because NBC would own the rights to the signal. The video could
still be gleaned from online sources or directly from the producer, of course,
but it could make the situation more difficult than it is now (NBC currently has
rights only to content that it owns, not to its signal). Some of the wilder
claims made by opponents of the treaty suggested that broadcasters could somehow
"lock up" public domain content simply by showing it, but this wasn't accurate.
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