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Lawmakers Move Into Broadcasting Debate
by Winter Casey
Senators wrote the director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week with concerns that some of the possible changes to the proposed World Intellectual Property Organization broadcasting treaty would go against U.S. law.
Some proposals "would needlessly create a new layer of rights that would disrupt U.S. copyright law," according to the letter sent Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and the panel's ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. "The terms of the revised draft broadcasting treaty appear to be inconsistent with United States law."
The letter was sent to Marybeth Peters, register of copyrights at the Library of Congress, and Jon Dudas, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A broadcasting treaty has been under discussion for many years.
The revised "treaty appears to grant broadcasters extensive new, exclusive rights in their transmissions for a term of at least 20 years, regardless of whether they have a right in the content they are transmitting. While we support the need to protect against signal theft of broadcast transmissions, the treaty appears to go beyond this purpose and grant broadcasters a right in their transmissions similar to a content holder's copyright," the lawmakers wrote.
They said the rights that would be granted by the proposed treaty "could limit legitimate, fair use of the content and would add an unnecessary layer of uncertainty in consumer use. The revised draft may also have the effect of restricting the rights of the underlying content owners and have implications, perhaps unintended, for intermediary liability."
The lawmakers urged Dudas and Peters to call for a treaty that would be significantly narrower in scope and only allow broadcasters to protect their signals.
Art Brodsky, communications director at Public Knowledge, said his group hopes "the [Bush] administration follows the wise advice of the senators." And Sarah Deutsch, associate general counsel of Verizon, and Jim Burger, an intellectual property and technology lawyer with the Dow Lohnes law firm, said while they believe the U.S. delegation is on the right track, they favor the senators' points.
Deutsch said "we would support a narrowly crafted treaty designed to protect signal theft." Her company is concerned with a treaty that she said could prevent the legitimate movement of signals within the home or in devices or services.
She added that Verizon is concerned that under the current version home networking services could be restricted or consumers would be forced to pay additional fees in order to watch programs at different times or in different places.
Burger said "many U.S. technology companies are concerned that the provisions of last year's proposed draft, which are still at issue, extend control over the way their devices -- software, hardware chips -- work. They would call the legality into question of personal video recorder or digital video records, home networks, and require IT products to respond to any technical protection measure imposed by the content owners."
Dell spokeswoman Colleen Ryan said her company is supporting an effort "to focus on signal protection versus the expansion of copyright-like liability."
The National Association of Broadcasters has argued that "broadcaster rights at the international level have not been updated for over 45 years, and this treaty is of critical importance to the preservation of free, over-the-air broadcasting both in the U.S. and abroad."
And Fritz Attaway, Washington general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, said even though his group "would agree with having a narrower treaty," he does not believe the proposals would have an impact on legitimate users or would be a threat to Internet service providers.
Attaway also said "the perceived threats of this treaty are grossly overblown and no one has ever come up with any evidence justifying the concerns that have been raised." He added that the proposals would not prevent the legitimate movement of signals.
Still, Burger said the draft would give European broadcasters more rights then they currently have under the Rome Convention, which protects the "performances of performers, phonograms of producers of phonograms and broadcasts of broadcasting organizations."
Attaway said "broadcasters from most western European countries have the right to authorize or prohibit the use of their signals, which is exactly what this treaty would provide if the broad rights being advocated by broadcasters are adopted," but this system has worked successfully in other parts of the world.
"The biggest problem for the treaty is the fact that many developing countries are trying to use this treaty as leverage for other areas such as the WTO to get better trade rules," Attaway added.
While some critics question the need for the treaty at all, Deutsch said it could be scrapped altogether if more agreement is not reached during the next meeting.
The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is scheduled to meet to discuss the treaty in June. This potentially could result in a more agreeable draft, which could then be considered in a diplomatic conference this fall.
Danny O'Brien, international outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, noted in a blog entry that the "WIPO copyright committee chair is currently producing a new 'non-paper,' due to be released on May 1, which will set the framework for discussions."
Canadian Bill Would Give Special IP Protections
The Canadian government has proposed legislation that would provide special time-limited intellectual property protection for Olympic and Paralympic words and symbols associated with the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, according to the Vancouver organizing committee for the games.
The act, proposed by Canadian Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier, also would ban un-authorized business association with the games. The committee said that "with the introduction of this bill, Canada is following the best practices of other host countries to enact special legislation for Olympic and Paralympic marks."
The committee noted that similar legislation was enacted in Australia for the Sydney 2000 Summer Games and is already in place for the London 2012 Summer Games.
Internet Use Up In India, Russia, China
Internet penetration in India, Russia and China increased the most in the world during 2006, according to analysis released Tuesday by comScore Networks, an Internet information provider.
China now represents the second-largest Internet population in the world, with 86.8 million users, comScore found. The United States still holds the top ranking for Internet use with 153.4 million users age 15 or older in January 2007.
The company said it bases its Internet usage statistics on the number of unique visitors to Web sites by country and through using a global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers.
"Internet users outside the U.S. now account for 80 percent of the world's online population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year," said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, in a statement.
ComScore also charted the Web properties in January that received the highest number of unique visitors. Sites that ranked the highest in this category included ones operated by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
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