From James Love at cptech: "Today WIPO finally took a step back from forcing a restrictive Rome Convention intellectual property right on Internetpublishing... This is a victory for everyone who has opposed linking webcasting to the broadcasting treaty. There is still a lot of work to. There is a strong likihood the traditional broadcasting treaty will move forward, and the EU will clearly push to expand this to cases where broadcasters use the Internet.... and there are considerable problems with many of the proposals for the broadcasting treaty, including some very strong rights, TPMs, and other problems. However, there is now also a growing movement away from granting IP rights in the content of transmissions, in favor of theft of services protections, which is a very positive development, and a new project to examine the impact of TPMs on limitations and exceptions, which is quite important. The Internet is far safer now than before, because the threat of a new treaty for Internet middleman is now much less likely."

Negotiations to give broadcasters a new layer of intellectual monopolies, above and beyond copyright, continue this week at WIPO. The draft Xcaster Treaty is the topic of the current meeting of WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. James Love provides an overview. For more on Xcaster see CPTech's collection of Xcaster docs.

For an overview of the current stage of events re: WIPO development agenda, see http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/pcda/ This is info from the First session of the Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to the WIPO Development Agenda (PCDA) February 20- 24, 2006, in Geneva, Switzerland. There are links here to analysis from IP Watch, Third World Network, EFF, FSF, CPTech and others. Also see del.icio.us wipo feed.

[James Love] Several NGOs had asked for a meeting with the Library of Congress (LOC) and the USPTO to discuss the status of negotiations at WIPO on a new treaty on Broadcasting, that includes a proposal for treaty provisions covering webcasting -- something that is not part of law in the US, Europe or elsewhere (except possibility in a limited way in Finland).

The United States is the primary advocate of creating a new global IP obligation for webcasting, even though there is no US law for this. In essence, the proposal creates an intellectual property right in information that is transmitted. This right is often described as a

http://www.cptech.org/wipo/15sep05letter2usptoloc.html: CPTech renews its request that the USPTO or the Library of Congress (LOC) invite formal public comment on the proposal to create a new International Treaty obligation establishing a novel intellectual property regime for webcasting, through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The treaty language proposed for a "webcasting"right would create a new layer of property rights, lasting at least 50 years, for materials that are transmitted by web servers over the Internet and other networks. Unlike copyright, the new webcaster right is not based upon a creative contribution. Any material, including material in the public domain, or licensed for public dissemination under a creative commons type license, would be burdened with this new layer of rights, which accompany any "public transmission" of any combination or representations of sounds and or images. [ft 1]