'Business as Usual' Expected at Next Round of WIPO Broadcast Treaty Talks

Talks on a treaty updating broadcasting protections against signal piracy resume next month in the World Intellectual Property Organization but, to broadcasters' disappointment, there's no date for a diplomatic conference, European Broadcasting Union Head-Intellectual Property Heijo Ruijsenaars told us. The Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) has been negotiating the treaty for years, but agreement on several key issues remains elusive, he and other participants said.

Broadcasters had hoped for a decision by the WIPO General Assembly (GA) this month setting a final deadline to fix a date for a diplomatic conference, Ruijsenaars said. Instead, member states "took note of" the SCCR report to the assembly "and directed it to continue its work, including on broadcasting," the GA said. Efforts to update the protection of broadcasting organizations in response to new technologies have been ongoing since 1998, the report noted.

The text on the table is quite close to being finalized, Ruijsenaars said. Discussion at the GA showed some countries want to complete the treaty but for political reasons didn't want to raise the issue at the assembly lest it become intertwined with other topics, he said. The Nov. 13-17 SCCR meeting, which will devote two days to the broadcast treaty, will take up where the May meeting (see 1705030020) left off, he said. Then, outstanding issues included which of the online signals broadcasters transmit should be mandatorily protected, and which should be protected on an optional basis, Ruijsenaars said. The question of which rights should be attached had become clear, and the consensus was that webcasting organizations shouldn't be covered, he said then. Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) disagreed then, saying everything from definition, to object of protection, rights and term was still on the table.

The treaty text now needs more work on, among other things, tightening the definition of a broadcast organization, and deciding which signals should be covered and how to deal with pre-broadcast signals, Ruijsenaars said. Broadcasters still hope for a forward-looking agreement that takes account of what they do and will do, he said. Pure webcasting is still out of the equation, he said.

KEI expects broadcasting to be one of the main issues at the SCCR meeting, said Information Society Projects Director Manon Ress. Because the usual civil society groups aren't very active at the moment, there's a "real risk" for internet-related issues and for the treaty, given the political power broadcasters hold, she said.

The EU said it hopes there will be sufficient engagement by the SCCR to speed up work and find consensus on the main elements of a possible future treaty. It remains committed to the talks and to the need to find agreement on how to safeguard broadcasting organizations from acts of piracy, it said.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has "no comment on the elements of the treaty or any meeting predictions" said a spokesman. The U.S. in May said delegations reached a better understanding of each other's positions, and the text became clearer, but member states had significant disagreements on some of the most fundamental issues, such as the object of protection and rights, that must be resolved before a diplomatic conference is called.