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Copyright tussle looming over online video?
Broadcast treaty threatens the net, says tech coalition

By Anne Broache

Published: Wednesday 06 September 2006

An online culture built around user-generated content on websites such as MySpace and YouTube would be imperiled by a new treaty, public interest groups and some technology companies said on Tuesday.

At issue is a treaty called "Protection of the Rights of Broadcasting Organizations", which proponents say is necessary to ensure TV and cable broadcasters - and now, their web-based counterparts - have the tools to combat unauthorised retransmission of their signals.

The World Intellectual Property Organization, or Wipo, a specialised arm of the UN, gave the go-ahead in 2003 to begin drafting the treaty but a final version is still pending.

Opponents say the treaty would go far beyond targeting so-called "signal piracy". They warn it would give broadcasters and webcasters exclusive, 50-year rights to authorise rebroadcasting of their signals; would create additional legal hoops for the average internet user to jump through; and could shrink existing protections in US law for public domain works and other instances of fair use.

With the latest draft of the document scheduled for consideration at a meeting in Geneva next week, the US Patent and Trademark Office hosted a roundtable discussion in the US, to allow for public comment.

A loose coalition of 35 companies and organisations, which are often at odds with each other on other topics, joined together to sign a statement of opposition, which was distributed at the two-hour event. The signatories included AT&T, Dell, HP, Intel, Sony, TiVo and Verizon Communications, as well as the American Library Association, the Broadband Service Providers Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Home Recording Rights Coalition.

Although their individual positions varied, the document's signatories generally argued that the broadcast and webcast lobby - backed by Yahoo! and other members of the Digital Media Association (DMA) - have not made a strong enough case for the new treaty. If theft of signals is truly the primary worry, they said, then existing US laws are likely to offer sufficient protections, or a more narrowly tailored proposal could be drafted.

But as it stands, some opponents argued, the proposal would trample on the legal rights consumers currently enjoy - such as recording TV broadcasts for later viewing and playing them back within their homes.

The proposal also embraces the legality of technological protection measures, which means there would be nothing to stop controversial copy-prevention regimes such as the broadcast flag, designed to prevent digital TV piracy, from being implemented, said EFF international affairs director Gwen Hinze. Such mandates "increase design costs, which are passed on to consumers, and reduce the feature set available to consumers," Hinze said.

Michael Petricone, senior vice president for government affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association, said the proposal "would enable 'casters to gain very unprecedented control in the home and personal network environment, which would interfere with the rollout of broadband and home networking services and new and innovative devices that allow users to use content in new and flexible ways".

Seth Greenstein, a partner at the Washington DC law office of Constantine Cannon who serves as outside counsel to the DMA, said that's not the intention of treaty supporters.

Greenstein said: "What we have always intended to be the scope of coverage is internet webcasting that is like broadcasting, not individual files, songs, audio or video clips made on individual websites but rather programming that is scheduled."

He said he believed the latest US-offered definition of netcasting satisfies that aim.

Jule Sigall, the US Copyright Office official who led the roundtable, said the most recent language, released earlier this summer, is "very much a step towards something else" and that next week's meetings of Wipo's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights will present "a very fluid situation" in which much could change.

Anne Broache writes for CNET News.com