Watching Sausage Made: WIPO Broadcast Copyright Treaty Congress & Large Public Interest Involvement

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: November 18, 2004 8:12:37 PM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Dewayne Hendricks 
<dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: Watching Sausage Made: WIPO Broadcast Copyright Treaty 
Congress & Large Public Interest Involvement

Copyright treaty laid bare: watch your governments make sausage!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:15:43 PM Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/18/copyright_treaty_lai.html

This week is my bi-annual pilgrimage to Geneva, Switzerland,
where I'm representing EFF at the negotiations over the
"Broadcast Treaty" which lets people who send out shows claim a
50 year owenership over them, even if the shows are publi
domain, copylefted, or of a non-copyrightable nature (like a
C-SPAN broadcast). It requires signatories to protect DRM with
laws that make it illegal to tell someone how to do more with
his television. And there's even a proposed element ("the
webcasting provision") that would bring this to the Web. This
stuff is way bad news.

But we're part of the largest coalition of "public interest"
groups in WIPO history. We're getting major face-time with the
delegates and making a difference.

Here are some posts I've just made to EFF's Deep Links blog
detailing what's going on:

Day one notes
(http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002115.php): One of the
things were doing here is taking exhaustive notes on who says
what, when, and what it means. We're providing the first-ever
in-depth peek into how the treaties that will rule your life are
getting made. On Day One, we saw the introduction of a brilliant
proposal by Chile to set a minimum group of public rights under
copyright -- like the right of the blind to turn books into
Braille without permission or payment -- that would apply in
every country, so that people cooperating on international
education/research, archiving and disabled access projects could
know that the stuff they sent to their collaborators was just as
legal abroad as at home.

Statement on limitations and exceptions
(http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002118.php): I'm giving
this statement tomorrow on the limitations and exceptions
proposal: "It is in the nature of archiving, education and the
provision of services to the disabled to be cooperative. Unlike
commercial, competitive enterprises where labor may be
replicated -- and charged for -- many times over; nonprofit
public interest work to distribute a joint effort as widely as
possible."

Day two notes
(http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002116.php): Day two was
all about the Broadcast Treaty, and saw really tough debate on
the Webcasting provision and the DRM stuff (WIPO calls DRM
"TPMs" -- technological protection measures. Kinky!). Most
notable, though, was that a saboteur took all of the literature
set out by the public-interest groups and hid it/trashed
it/threw it in the toilets.

Letter on stolen documents
(http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php): Here's the
letter we sent to the WIPO Secretariat (the administrative
overseers) on our stolen literature.

--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com


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