This seems important enough to post here without comment. In fact, any commentary on my part would be superfluous (not that that usually stops me). Comments are, of course, welcome.
WIPO carves up the Internet (and the broadcast spectrum)
May 4, 2006
James Love
Don’t bother reading this unless the words “new intellectual property right” and “the Internet” seem important when put together, because it is a twisted and complicated story. Even the key players are struggling to figure out what is going on. But like a lot of twisted and complicated things, it is important.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a specialized UN agency, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. This week it is holding a contentious five-day negotiation on a new Treaty, the purpose of which is to provide a new “protection” for “broadcasting and webcasting organizations.”
What does this mean? WIPO is debating whether or not to create a new intellectual property right in information that is distributed over television, radio, cable television, or through any wired or wireless computer network, including the Internet. This is something different from copyright. Indeed, it is designed to benefit people who cannot get a copyright, because a work belongs to someone else (the person or group that created it), or because the information is in the public domain. The new right is not a “copyright,” but a “broadcaster” or “webcaster” right. It is a bad idea when applied to television or radio, but a disaster if applied to the Internet.
In different ways, the US and the EU both think they can use this right to extract money for simply distributing information over the Internet into foreign markets.
The right comes at the expense of consumers and copyright owners — benefiting the distributors of information. It might be called the “middleman right.” This has attracted a large group of corporate lobbyists who want to see their clients named as beneficiaries of the treaty.
It works like this. If the owner of a broadcasters or webcaster publishes anything, they get an ownership right in the information, equal to the rights of copyright owner, so before you could make a copy, share or reuse the information in any way, you would have to get permissions from both the copyright owner and distributor of the work. This is supposed to “protect” the “caster” for its investments in broadcasting or webcasting.
