It’s been a harrowing day, and I’m not even near Geneva, where the negotiations on a WIPO broadcasting treaty went through some ups and downs today. After yesterday’s session, it looked as if the treaty would be gone for good, as numerous delegations had piled in to make new demands just before closing time.

Today, on the last day of the relevant committee’s session, the chairman (who’s been on the job for decades, apparently) came back with the recommendation – to the sound of jaws dropping – to convene a diplomatic conference next year. A conference means that the treaty is basically a done deal.

In today’s afternoon session, negotiators finally reached an anti-climax, which is quite typical for WIPO. The treaty will stay on the committee’s agenda, but that’s it for now:

The General Assembly decides that the subject of protection of broadcasting and cablecasting organizations be retained in the agenda of the SCCR for its regular sessions, and considers the convening of a diplomatic conference only after agreement on object and scope of the treaty [...].

Thanks to KEI’s Manon Ress for quickly posting the decisions (they’ll take weeks to appear on the WIPO website).

UPDATE: The South Centre has just published a research paper (.pdf, 350 kB) on the topic. Here’s what it says in a nutshell:

The research paper concludes that there is a lack of evidence indicating that the array of additional rights and protection for broadcasting and cablecasting organizations, as incorporated in the text of a Revised Draft Basic Proposal for a WIPO Treaty on the Protection of  Broadcasting Organizations, are either necessary or desirable from a developing country perspective. On the other hand, evidence suggests that the proposed treaty in its current form would create more costs thanbenefits in the short- and long-term for developing countries and is not conducive to social and economic development.

You might think that it’s tough luck for the authors, Viviana Munoz of the Innovation and Access to Knowledge (IAKP) Programme and Andrew Chegue Waitara, a Researcher at the Plato Institute in Nairobi: Now that the paper is out, the talks have collapsed. But I wouldn’t be so sure. Firstly, the South Centre’s research papers are usually very insightful and substantial, so I suppose this one will go on to influence a lot of discussions.

And secondly, the phrase is floating around that the Broadcast Treaty now is “a problem waiting for a place to happen”. The treaty’s backers will take their worries to other fora, or try to strike bilateral deals. If keeping bad regulation out of one treaty is bad, try keeping it out of some fifty to hundred bilateral agreements.

My advice is to grab the paper now, give it a read, and save it for another day, when the Broadcast Zombie will start roaming the lands again.

[UPDATE]

Looks like I could have saved some bits on this post yesterday – but you never know. IPWatch reports that the negotiations have broken down at the last minute. A diplomatic conference to wrap the treaty up in November will not take place.

Apparently, the US’ demand to extend the “broadcasting” treaty to transmissions over the Internet (”webcasting”) prompted other member states to submit lots of demands of their own, leading to a mess that became impossible to reconcile:

The discussion stalled progressively as objections and alternatives to language in the chair’s unofficial draft treaty proposal piled up, sources said. But it turned on a statement by the US delegation late Thursday night that it could not see any way to resolve differences in the time remaining. The US said that in the entire paper under discussion they saw “not a single area of agreement,” whether it was new or years-old proposals, a US official said.

But the meeting continues today, and we’ll have to wait for the final outcome. For now, this is very good news. However, this treaty has been negotiated on and off for ten years, and it’s not out of the question that this Zombie will rise out of its grave again (much like software patents in Europe, by the way).

Looks like WIPO has had a very good two weeks. With the Development Agenda underway and the Broadcast Treaty collapsed, two progressive key issues have turned out well.

I’ll raise a glass tonight to all the NGOs that helped to make this happen. Y’all have a good weekend!

[/UPDATE]

Last week, the heated negotiations on a Development Agenda for WIPO saw the organisation make some progress towards managing knowledge in the best interest of all of us. This week, it seems that the pendulum is swinging the other way.

In the negotiations on a “broadcasting treaty” at WIPO, members are debating whether broadcasters such as TV and radio stations should get a copyright-like monopoly on the things they broadcast. While this is silly enough – it will keep armies of IP lawyers clothed and fed for decades to come, with the rest of us picking up the tab -, the bigger problem is that this will badly hurt the ways in which sound and video can be used on the Internet.

Material that’s in the public domain may be re-monopolised simply because it has been broadcast by a TV or radio station. Another issue arises with sites like YouTube, which often host short clips of movies. Under the proposed treaty, a TV station which has broadcast the movie in question could then demand that the clip be taken down, even if the movie is in the public domain, or the movie’s copyright holder has no objection to seeing the clip on the net.

Who backs this treaty? Owners of TV stations, mostly. They seem to have the US government and the European Union working for them. Opposition is coming from civil society groups and library organisations, but also from some major firms in the US: AT&T, Intel, Dell, Verizon.

If this treaty is adopted in its present form, it would create a new layer of intellectual monopoly powers. Depending on how it turns out precisely, it might require you to get permission before you re-use work that is made available on the Internet in the public domain or under a free licence (such as Creative Commons). A broadcasting treaty may also introduce restrictions that in effect neutralise the exceptions and limitations provided by copyright.

I’m not sure how bad it will get, but it’s definitely a step in the wrong direction.

Here’s a brief explanation of the broadcasting treaty, and here’s the current discussion on the A2K mailing list.

Last week brought truly good news. After two years of negotiations, it looks like the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) may finally turn into an organisation that works for the interest of society at large, rather than just those of a small group of major holders of intellectual monopolies.
Last week’s meeting of the “Provisional Committee on a Development Agenda” (PCDA) resulted in a total of 45 recommendations (derived from over 100 proposals). IPWatch says:

Negotiators concluded a weeklong meeting with agreements on a wide range of proposals for new development-related activities – some hard to imagine for WIPO two years ago – and a recommendation to set up a new committee to implement the proposals.

“This is a major achievement,” said a participating official. “It’s a complete overhaul of the WIPO concept, broadening it to reflect society’s growing concern with ownership of technologies and knowledge, and its effects for the future, both in developed and developing countries.”

Recommendations cut across al areas of WIPO, from its work in “technical assistance” (advice to developing countries on building systems for the enforcement of intellectual monopolies) to WIPO’s own mandate and governance. The recommendations about the organisation’s mandate could prove crucial. The PCDA recommends that WIPO should coordinate its work more closely with other UN organisations, something that more conservative members were reluctant to do. After all, a discussion about copyright exceptions for educational materials might turn out slightly different when UNESCO is involved.

Another recommendation is ” To request WIPO, within its mandate, to expand the scope of its activities aimed at bridging the digital divide, in accordance with the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), also taking into account the significance of the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF).” This may help to introduce more progressive views on the digital world into WIPO, and would have been unthinkable two years ago
The recommendations still need to be adopted by WIPO’s General Assembly in September. I’m curious to see how this goes – the whole process was a heated battle, and progressive texts have a tendency of disappearing at WIPO. But if these recommendations are adopted, WIPO will be on a path that’s much more helpful not only for developing countries, but for everybody on this planet who isn’t a major record label, movie studio or pharmaceutical giant. The latter three may suffer if they cling to their outdated business models, but don’t worry about them just yet. They’ll retain more than enough political influence.
The United States, which had been the staunchest opponents of a Development Agenda for WIPO during the negotiation process, emphasised that the decisions taken were within WIPO’s mandate. In what looks like an attempt to establish a give-and-take, they also sought to link the results to renewed work on harmonising national patent laws across the globe. This has long been a pet goal of the US, but developing countries are sceptical, as they think they are unlikely to benefit.

Extensive reporting on last week’s negotiations and the Development Agenda in general can be found at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (in English), at FGV law school (in Brazilian Portuguese), and at Knowledge Ecology International (in English). They were some of the numerous civil society groups that put a huge amount of work into making this happen.

Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF) warned of one-sided discussion of patents and other intellectual monopoly powers at the G8 summit, taking place in Germany this week.

Tido von Schön-Angerer, MSF’s director of the campaign for “Access to Essential Medicines”, said that the expansion of patent protection in developing countries had not led to more innovation in pharmaceutical research. These countries, he says, are still lacking access to affordable drugs to fight malaria, HIV/Aids and tuberculosis.

Mr Schön-Angerer said that while patents as an instrument were indispensable, they were not in themselves a sufficient way to promote innovation. He pointed to a special group at the WHO which is looking into alternavtive ways of providing incentives for pharmaceutical research (IP-Watch has more info here).

MSF is concerned that when the topic of patent protection for pharmaceuticals comes up, politicians often point to counterfeit medicines. The group’s spokesman condemned such conterfeiting as a criminal and dangerous activity, but pointed out that forged drugs do not actually endanger innovation, the protection of which the G8 leaders are currently highlighting as a key issue.

According to MSF, the G8 countries are planning talks with several emerging countries, in particular India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and China (termed “Outreach-5), in which they are going to emphasise the value of strict “protection” of intellectual monopolies.

Yet, said MSF, these countries are world leaders in the manufacturing of affordable generic medicines. The organisation is worried that they are going to be subjected to increasing pressure not to use the maneuvering space that TRIPS and other international agreements allow them on issues such as compulsory licences for drugs.

MSF emphasised that while there was usually a public outcry when a developing country issued a compulsory licence for producing an urgently-needed medicine, countries such as the US and Italy routinely used such instruments themselves.

via heise.de