WIPO copyright committee agrees to broadcast treaty ‘working document’

The World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) copyright committee concluded two weeks of meetings early Thursday and adopted a working document for a broadcasting treaty. WIPO said in a concluding text that the committee “reaffirmed its commitment to continue work, on a signal based approach, consistent with the 2007 General Assembly mandate, towards developing an international treaty to update the protection of broadcasting and cablecasting organizations in the traditional sense.” The protection of broadcasters “in the traditional sense” appears to exclude Internet streaming and downloading. The committee meetings concluded at about 2 a.m. local time in Geneva, Switzerland. The United States and South Africa are pushing for proposed broadcasting treaty protections that extend to online signal piracy. The U.S. delegation said last week a treaty that does not address Internet activities would not be worth it. South Africa, which tabled a joint proposal with Mexico this spring, also spoke this week, telling the committee that most member states agree that signal piracy should be addressed on non-traditional platforms. WIPO said the working document the committee agreed to, which is not yet publicly available, will be the basis for discussions at further committee meetings Nov. 19-23, 2012. At that time, WIPO said, the committee will continue to work towards a text to decide whether to convene a diplomatic conference in 2014. The WIPO committee meetings were attended by Eugene Filipovich, senior policy analyst for international negotiations at Canadian Heritage, along with a Canadian diplomat based in Geneva, but Canada did not take the floor. A broadcasting insider with knowledge of the situation noted that, right now, the debate at the international level does not involve Canada. “It involves major players and if they come to a resolution, Canada can either choose after the fact to go along with it or not,” the insider said. “I think it’s at that point that stakeholders in Canada would have more of an interest.” The working document agreed to is expected to be publicly available next week. news@thewirereport.ca

WIPO copyright committee agrees to broadcast treaty ‘working document’

Broadcast | July 26, 2012

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