(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights' (SCCR) Special Session is taking place right now at Geneva. The meeting (and another in June 2007) aims to fix the proposed Broadcast Treaty so that it could be ratified by the end of this year in a diplomatic conference. If no consensus is found on the content, there will be no conference and - most likely - no treaty at all.
EDRI is participating to the meetings together with other NGOs (EFF, CPTech, IP-justice etc) as an observer. The organizations have prepared together a joint statement ", which is also endorsed by a large number of technology companies and which main message is that nobody has been able to argue why a treaty is needed at all.
However, in the spirit of constructive engagement if the treaty is to be moved forward in any form, the statement provides with least minimum requirements, at both the principle and the practical language level, notwithstanding more comprehensive specific proposals by some of the signatories. Of major importance is the first of these requirements:
"We believe that the current rights-based approach of the treaty must be abandoned entirely. We understand that some parties to these negotiations have equated 'signal protection' with granting 'rights to prohibit' certain uses of broadcasts. We believe that rights in any form are not signal protection, or signal-based protection, and we cannot support their inclusion in any potential new Instrument in connection with Broadcasting."
EDRI is also particularly concerned with the possibility that the draft treaty proposal allows for control over Internet retransmissions of broadcasts and cablecasts. As demonstrated at previous occasions, the power of such statements lay in the coalition of diverse industry and NGOs that sign up, even though not optimal from each signatory, including EDRI, point of view. It remains that the core message EDRI wants to convey with its endorsement is that there should be no additional layer of rights for broadcasting organizations and that the statement opposes the treaty applications to the Internet, in case the text continues to take a rights-based approach rather than a signal theft or signal protection approach.
The meeting will end at Friday and a more detailed report will be found from the next EDRI-gram.
Joint Statement of Certain Civil Society, Private Sector and Rightsholders
Representatives for the First Special Session of the SCCR
http://www.edri.org/docs/joint_statement_sccr1.pdf
Wipo Casting Treaty Blog
http://www.cptech.org/blogs/wipocastingtreaty/
Meeting Documents - SCCR 1st Special Session
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=12043
EDRI-gram: The broadcast treaty stalled by WIPO General Assembly
(11.10.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.19/broadcast
(Thanks to Ville Oksanen - EDRI-member Electronic Frontier Finland )