WIPO Creating New IP Rights Over Web Content 118
An anonymous reader writes "The WIPO is currently engaged in negotiating a new treaty on digital IP rights, but they're having trouble agreeing on the particulars. Though the world of YouTube and podcasts seems like a place that 'requires' laws, the WIPO seems confused about what to do about it. From the article: 'The proliferation of low cost video cameras and editing software, higher bandwidth cable, satellite and Internet connections, are creating a highly diverse and dynamic environment for creating, distributing, redistributing and remixing information. To this exciting world the UN's specialized agency for intellectual property wants to impose a new legal regime. The problem is, no one here has a clue what the legal regime should look like.' The U.S. is also pushing for reviving a 1962 treaty (never ratified) that would give the large cable distributors (like Discovery, Sci-fi, Spike, etc) ownership of even public domain content if they carry it. This would be in addition to any rights normally afforded the distributors. "
Real information rights!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only IP right that is real would be the right to copy. The right to copy and use ideas, information, and invention that comes our way freely without fraud or coercion. This right is just like the right to free religion, the right to free speech, or the right to choose our employers rather than to be slaves.
There are also dutys, like the duty to call copyrights and patents what they are: a fraud, a lie, and not a property right. Like the duty to call "piracy" what it is: the boarding of a ship and murdering people and not copying. Like the duty to call them controls rather than incentive or protection. Like the duty to bypass and defy people who try to control our liberties via controlling the information we have or via telling us how we must use it.
Finally, there are other things that are just human nature, like sharing music and information and ideas freely with the world around us.
Lets just face it, the WIPO are WhImPO's and are against free markets and property rights, not for them.
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason is not any hate of foreign countries or trade, but rather that it's a code word for giving more power and money to the ultra rich and powerful by restricting the freedoms and rights (including property rights) of the working class (which includes the middle class).
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I also thoroughly enjoy the implication that people not in the working class don't work. I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump regularly pulled twelve-hour days, and having known a couple of wealthy people (including my parents, sadly after I moved out), they got where they are by working hard and smart and taking risks.
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It isn't just "like" the right to free speech, it is the right of free speech.
Little, if any, "speech" is original anyway, its just people copying the ideas of other people. Thus restrictions on certain kinds of copying are de facto restrictions on the freedom of expression.
Whether you agree that such restrictions are v
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Exactly!!!
And "exatly" are just some sounds or graphical symbols I copied from someone (I guess from my firts or second teacher of english, while english is not my mother-tongue).
If you do not want something to be copied, do not tell it, do not write it. Maybe in the future you should also forget it ASAP so that you wont broadcast it accidentaly with your brain using EM waves or something which others my pick-up.
:)
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Posession is 9/10s of the law. (Score:2, Flamebait)
They can stop making the product. If there is enough demand for the product, someone else will step up.
Let the invisible hand take care of this.
Of course, since the USA doesn't actually create anything of value to the rest of the world....save food and media...it's understandable why the government wants to protect the economy.
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By the way, where was the CPU in your computer made?
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I have an alarm, dog and shotgun. (Score:2)
My main system is a dual-processor Athlon MP system. A few minutes googling couldn't turn up a manufacturing country.
Maybe they should let the citizens of the nation in which the corporation is based have free-access...but limit it for the rest of the world.
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If these companies can't figure out a way to protect their 'intellectual property', then tough titty for them!
Oh great, so you think the solution is ultra-hardcore DRM designed to lock up media forever, rather than a liberal copyright system which returns the work to the public domain after a limited period of time? Because that's what the "invisible hand" would come up with if there were no copyright laws.
That's exactly the opposite of the direcftion things should be going in. Be careful what you wish for.
You think so? (Score:2)
You don't need BitTorrent to get DVDs of movies still in the theater...I go to the 'swap meet' in New Haven on Ella T. Grasso Blvd durring the summer and buy all sorts of movies for like $5 each!
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'Cause I think that the ultra-strict DRM would drive consumers away..
That doesn't seem to be backed up by how the market behaves. Most people seem perfectly willing to accept DRM.
Anyway, even if most consumers did not accept DRM, what's the alternative? The companies couldn't make any money if they did not own any copyright - so they would make more money buying selling to the few people who would accept the hardcore DRM. The other alternative is that media companies could stop selling to the public, and start dealing in specialized media that they sell to big businesses w
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The only reason DRM works is because circumventing it is illegal.
Not at all. DRM works because most people couldn't be bothered defeating it, or don't know how. Anyone who wants to break DRM is not being stopped by the law.
In fact, you seem to have it exactly backwards. The only reason that companies release media like CDs without DRM, is because there are copyright laws. Take away the copyright laws, and you only have technological methods to rely on.
Any DRM that is not backed up by such laws will be quickly broken.
What difference do the laws make? Any DRM is pretty much broken now, despite the laws. But this is in a climate where
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Arrogance like this just gets me so angry ...
Hypocrite, IP "rights" are the only bogus assertion around here.
... on importing slaves, and then if someone "stole" those slaves by freeing them, then I would say tough shit, that's the punishment you get for imposing false property rights.
Why don't you just way, "well it's OK for the King to choose what people are allowed to say as long as it makes sense and has a rational and moral component". And the appropiate response would be. FU, pull your head out and use the God given brain you were given to take things to their "rational" conclusion.
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Arrogance like this just gets me so angry ...
That's strange. I didn't detect any arrogance in that post. However, your arrogance is off the scale with comments like the above and these:
Hypocrite, IP "rights" are the only bogus assertion around here.
then I would say tough shit, that's the punishment you get for imposing false property rights.
And the appropiate response would be. FU, pull your head out and use the God given brain you were given to take things to their "rational" conclusion.
Yeah, no arrogance there at all. You just believe that your position is the only valid one, and anybody who disagrees should fuck off.
Don't mod for vengeance (Score:2)
If you disagree, don't hit moderate, hit reply.
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you look at the world without the modern day legal blinders on, yes, you do have a basic natural right to do exactly that. The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules that were designed to give an artificial legal and financial protection the inventor of said invention, idea, etc.
If people were driven to invent for the betterment of the human race rather than their personal financial gain, these artificial restrictions on a basic human right wouldn't exist.
You are making an assertion that it is moral to withhold a lifesaving cure for those who can't afford it. I find that disturbing. There is very little morality in modern IP laws. It's all about profit. I guess it could be moral to you if you are a Ferengi... But back to your "cure" example. It is simply amazing how much government funded (that means TAXPAYER funded) research ends up with privately patented drugs. This is the case with MOST government funded research by the way, such as with NASA, DOD, DOE, etc.
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Intellectual property rights are arbitraty and contrary to human nature. The fact that hollywood is having such a hard time preventing people from copying movies shows just how natural sharing is. The whole internet (and even this forum) are based on the idea of sharing knowledge, ideas, and information... for free. Knowledge yearns to be free. Everyone loves giving their opinion and loves sharing their knowledge--that is just human nature. in fact, that is the sessence of being hu
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A technically correct, but completely useless observation. Some people are driven to invent for the betterment of society, some are driven by the desire for profit, some are driven by the desire to do something cool, etc. Always has been, always will be.
The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules
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No. Most of the money spent by pharmaceuticals goes to marketing, administration and inefficient production. Not even 20% of the revenue goes to R&D.
The actual choice is between MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion developing a drug while wasting $4 billion, and you paying the $5 billion for all of it, or you paying only the $1 billion for the actual drug development, and fewer golf camps and pharmaceutical dinners for health-care execs.
"Pr
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Yeah, I worded that poorly. Of course IP law doesn't actually give a profit guarantee. It guarantees a specific environment which provides the opportunity for a profit, which wouldn't exist if someone who had not sunk any investment into R&D could come along and compete on a level playing field against your product. Regardless of how much $$ you actually sp
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Based on your say so? Hmm.
Some people are driven to invent for the betterment of society, some are driven by the desire for profit, some are driven by the desire to do something cool, etc. Always has been, always will be.
While true, people did that before laws that artificially restricted basic human rights. Now it's just about insane huge piles of cash, not simple "profit."
The choices are not between MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion to develop a drug and you paying for it, or
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No, it is not useless b/c I say so, I say so b/c it is useless. Or do you see a value in observing the consequences of a scenario that presupposes a complete change of human nature?
The part about patented drugs being developed with taxpayers funding the vast majority of the research (if not all of it?)
Yes, I read that part, and ignored it b/c it is A)untrue in my experience and B)completely non-supported. Point out some patented drugs th
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Yes, I read that part, and ignored it b/c it is A)untrue in my experience and B)completely non-supported. Point out some patented drugs that were developed based mostly on public funding, and I will agree with you that something is wrong there.
Heh. I have to admit that I can't spell the names of most of the drugs on the market and defiantly can't pronounce them and therefor can't possibly produce that kind of information, but I can tell you that the information comes from people in the field that I trust an
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Except IP rights were originally not created as an innovation incentive, they were originally a intended to enrich the friends of the crown in exchange for their support (salt monopolies, stationers guild, etc); ie, an alternative taxation system.
Those monopolies were scaled back, but through propaganda campaigns (claiming how 'necessary' they were for 'innovation', or how 'authors' needed to be 'protected') the monopolists managed to at least partially retain their priviliges.
Creative people are driven to invent for the betterment of the human race. Merchants, on the other hand, tend to be driven to find ways to evade competition. Avoiding competition is what the whole IP is, and always has been, about.
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That may have been way back when, but that is not the case NOW. What happened 300 years ago doesn't change my statement as it applies to today. Many laws have changed over the years - things that used to be illegal are now legal, and vice versa. IP laws got worse.
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In effect, it appears to me that he's saying: "you're right, the system is bad, but it's really even worse than you think" rather than disputing your point.
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Your assertion that you have some "right" to do whatever you want with someone else's ideas, information, or invention is just that - an assertion. It does not flow from any first principle. In other words, what moral or rational basis do you use to argue that if a company spends e.g. $1 billion dollars developing a cure for some disease that you have the "right" to just steal their formula and start cranking out cheap copies?
That's ok - copyright doesn't flow from any first principle either. It's just a
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Unless you count "being entitled to own the fruit of your labor" as a principle.
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In the U.S., the legal right of a person not to be owned by another didn't exist until 140 years ago, and a woman's legal right to vote didn't exist until 80 years ago. This has no bearing on a matter of principle, however; we regard those rights as having always existed as natural rights that were in violation until recognized by abolition and suffrage. The natural right to own your intellectual property also existed long before 250 years ago; it existe
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I dunno bout you but, (Score:2)
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I wonder why the UN can't do something truly unusual in this circumstance and leave well enough alone.
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So there's no ne
You Can't Own Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Better start paying Cesar royalties.
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Ultimately it's all 'we say it's so, and we're backing it up with physical force' - doesn't matter whether it's crazy or not.
Wait, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm, no, regular copyright laws cover it quite well. Specialized laws are not required. Particularly, the US effort to revive a dead treaty which would allow big corporate entities to rope off bits of the public domain simply becaue they used it is not necessary (and, anyway, something the US could not Constitutionally adhere to since it exceeds, quite clearly, the Constitutional power of the US government as regards IP, since it would extend IP rights to someone who is not the creator of work, and that do not arise because of a relationship with the creator.)
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He [The President ]shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof;
Treaty vs. Constitution: Constitution wins (Score:2)
Er, no, they aren't.
"The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution." Reid v. Covert, 354 US 1 (1957) at 5-6.
"It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights - let alone alien to our entire constitutional history a
Public Domain (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean the material is no longer public domain?
I can't imagine that would work... since anyone could go back to the original source material and use that.
Or is this just an attempt to put public proceedings (Senate/Congress sessions for example) into private hands?
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Quite a few talkies became PD properties as well. Before 1978 (I think) the term was 28 years with optional extension. So many films from 1950 or before were not renewed and became public domain. By the 1930's cinema had become a fairly major media force so there's a decent amount of material.
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How does that work?
Does this mean the material is no longer public domain?
If I was them I'd be more worried that it means loss of "common carrier" status... meaning that if they now own the content they supply (whether public domain or not) then they are now legally liable for any violation it may cause.
Broadcast Treaty (Score:1)
Theoretically, a Creative Commons-licensed podcast could be broadcast by a cable station, and then the creator would lose rights to rebroadcast the material on their own!
More info via the EFF [eff.org].
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If you could get your hands on a copy some other way, cool.
The interesting thing is if this comes about, will Creative Commons and others modify their licenses to prevent broadcast by entities who claim rights in this way? If so, then will the broadcasters go back to the table to give themselves rights to do s
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Not quite... it's more along MS's "Embrace & Extend" platform... the station would hold all the rights to re-air THEIR broadcast. That means that you couldn't copy their broadcast, but if you got the public film from somewhere else, that copy would still be in the public domain.
The change would basically make a broadcast into a per
Was Carl Marx right? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Marx may have been wrong about a lot of things, but this wasn't one of them.
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Seriously, you can't believe how much this burns...
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Then you need the cool, smooth Cream of the Marketplace as applied by the Invisible Hand.
*shudder*
It was Proudhon (Score:2)
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He formed the little-known, blacklisted Groucho Marxist-Leninist splinter group.
I meant K-A-R-L of course. I even google-spellchecked that and then forgot to correct the spell-o.
Why does *anyone* have to own this stuff? (Score:5, Interesting)
Previously, if I had wanted lame videos of punk skateboarders doing tricks, angsty teenagers venting their mixed-up feelings, middle-age housewives boody-popping, etc. I would have had to spend countless hours trolling the murky depths and dark recesses of the Internet to find them. Thanks to YouTube, I have a single, convenient place to satisfy my disgusting and perverse needs.
Seriously though, can we please stop trying to create artificial scarcity? We don't really need it; TV shows, movies, and music worth paying for are already scarce enough.
Re:Why does *anyone* have to own this stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Commercial distributors are very well aware of this fact; they've been profiting from it for decades.
The reason for introducing this new 'broadcast right' is so that they can continue to do so as they have been in the face of competition.
Sadly, this is not a new development - this activity has been ongoing for some years. See also: http://www.eff.org/IP/broadcastflag/ [eff.org]
The problem multiplies exponentially.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Internet has changed the world in many significant ways, but it has not changed basic human morals, and won't. I see nothing wrong with sharing things with others, and any regulatory body that wants to change that will find me looking for, and finding, other ways to do so.
Copyright and IP law as they currently are implemented
Lets say someone in highschool in Chicago makes some wacky video on their pc, and shares it with friends via CD. There is no way to police this sort of content production.
Now, lets say that they share it with several million of their friends via news groups? Still, not much hope of policing this. Okay, so our content creator now shares it with several million of their friends via YouTube. Suddenly, because of the visibility of the WWW, people think that it should be regulated, scrutinized, and by god, lets punish those evil copyright infringers.
Human behavior has not changed. The thing that changed is that now more people can more quickly see what others are doing. This doesn't mean that there is more infringement necessarily, only that more people can see what they think is infringement.
Regulating the viewing mechanism for that content will not stop its production. Result: This is a broken way to try to fix what was not a problem in the first place.
Additionally, by putting the burden on YouTube, MySpace and others, they are creating a sort of conscripted volunteer police force, which in the end will also fail.
The only way to fix these infringements is to make them legally not infringements. For many of the same reasons that we should not be fighting a war on drugs http://www.leap.org/ [leap.org], we shouldn't be fighting a war on copyright infringement. Those who fight copyright infringements (**AAs) are simply building sandcastles on the beach at low tide.
The UN, or any other body does not have enforcement authority, nor will they, UNLESS they decide to change / repeal the overreaching copyright laws that have to date been enacted.
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Nobody would even want to police such stuff - there's little chance for large content producers to make money on it, since they neither own, nor distribute it. The problem arises only when we turn to the for-profit content production, when the producer wants to receive income from his work, usually on per-copy basis.
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What you have said is more or less true, but you unbelievably underestimate the industriousness of humans when they really want something. Trust
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The broadcast treaty part at least has nothing to do with the producers. They can get copyrights now for that. These guys want rights to your work and mine should they broadcast it. (Send it to someone over the net? Say I send you a video of mine with a CC BY-SA license and our ISPs claim you don't have the right to use the video according to the lic
mothballs (Score:5, Funny)
Ill-advised remakes of things that weren't much good in the first place.. you can just smell Hollywood's influence.
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Shouldn't the US be worried about other things? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is the United States wasting what little good will it has around the world with intellectual property rights issues? Why is the destruction of public domain a top priority? I would think that a potentially nuclear Iran, the Iraq war and global terrorism would take up the time of the diplomats. Are government officials being bought off with cash or sexual favors from aspiring actresses? If the air conditioning/ home heating industry lobbied for international regulations that every building in the world would have to be maintained at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, it would be crazy. I guess public domain now means "Ready to be taken into the possession of a large corporation".
My guess is that government regulators don't understand what's going on. They receive their money/blowjobs from the content industry and do as they are told.
IP is all we produce! (Score:2)
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Because the government has been secretly been taken over by Ferengi disguised as humans. Of course anything that doesn't make a profit is immoral to a Ferengi. But seriously: Paid lobbyists greasing palms. Nothing else needs to be said.
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Because it can compete with the new copyrighted stuff. (One reason at least.)
To me it is one of the reasons they also don't want copyrights to run out, even if they never intend to offer the old works for sale again. They may compete in the market with the new stuff.
all the best,
drew
a place that 'requires' laws (Score:2)
Are people threatening bodily harm? If not, then I can not see a "requirement" for laws at all.
What's wrong with law? (Score:3, Interesting)
UN's specialized agency for intellectual property wants to impose a new legal regime
I, for one, like living in a society ruled by laws rather than the whims of men. If by 'legal regime' the author means a legal structure in which to resolve disputes, I am all for it. After all, disputes will happen and the law should provide a means to deal with them in a civilized and fair manner. By referring to an attempt to codify our values as a regime we indicate that we are no longer willing to participate in this discourse and abdicate any power we might have to influence the outcome in a way beneficial to us. We shouldn't focus on the fact that there will be laws that may limit what we can do when interacting with other people, but should remember that laws have their uses and abuses and we should try to participate in the process. If we don't I guarantee to you that someone will and that their interests will be considered with a weight proportional to the energy and money they invested in the process. As individuals and groups without great political and economic resources we shouldn't turn out backs on the very idea of law, it's all we have.
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I like living in a society ruled by laws as long as the laws are reasonable. Right now the current copyright and IP laws are broken -- they are just not working and the "content industry" keeps trying to "fix" it by passing ever more stringent laws and stronger DRM. Not only is this not working thus far, but is only contributing to the problem. Bad laws undermine the whole system of law and order; just look at Prohibition, the drug war, the 55 mph speed limit in the U.S., and the current copyright wars a
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Laws are by definition whims of men, hence the fact that there are so many stupid ones.
To paraphrase the old saying ... (Score:2)
It doesn't matter what kind of laws you make... (Score:3, Insightful)
People today are able to send incredible amounts of information to each other through ad hoc networks of various kinds, the only way to make any serious impact on that would be to create some sort of totalitarian central sharing system staffed with vast amounts of mpaa/riaa goons and real penalties for end users. Anything else... well, it looks good on paper but what would you do? Throw 60mio people in jail? Even with the rabid sentences in the US, I think it's only about 3%.. 20% would be beyond insane.
60 million people in jail? (Score:2)
Of course you don't through 60 million people in jail. Increasing the legal penalties (and broadening defitions) for common activity just allows them to more easily nab the people that they do want to nail. If you've got 60 million people who are now regularly committing a "crime," it's much easier to nail the ones you want for some reason or other.
Ownership of "public domain" content (Score:2)
FUCK OFF
Did the author even read the article? (Score:3, Informative)
Did the author even read the article, or is his knee twitching after a cursory skim-over?
Anonymous Reader said: The U.S. is also pushing for reviving a 1962 treaty (never ratified) that would give the large cable distributors (like Discovery, Sci-fi, Spike, etc) ownership of even public domain content if they carry it.
The actual article said: One faction in the negotiations wants to revamp provisions in a 1961 treaty (one that the United States and 80 other countries never signed), with new or expanded intellectual property rights for anyone who "broadcasts" third party content.
Yes giving ownership of public domain content would be insane, but from the article I don't see the U.S.A. proposing that (and apparently they didn't like it in 1961 either).
According to http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/a2k/2007-Janu ary/001971.html [essential.org]
(linked from the article), the U.S.A. is apaprently in favor of the
narrower signal-based treaty that does NOT give exclusive rights to
broadcasters.
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Protection for technological protection measures and exceptions and limitations consistent with international treaties remain critical components for any convention.
So, no, the narrower signal-based treaty doesn't grant exclusive rights to broadcasters, just the right to implement DRM and have it be illegal via this treaty to circumvent said measures. In fact, a copy of the broadcast signal would probably be considered "evidence" that you had deliberately circumvented the DRM. All it takes is one sentence to entirely change the meaning of this document, and clearly it works since you think the Americans have
ownership and multiplying probelms (Score:1)
IANAL, but as I understand it, the creator / author / composer / artist automatically has ownership of the created work - except in the case of "works for hire", which are owned by the person / entity who commissioned the work.
As for the old, non-ratified treaty, it just sounds wrong. It seems to require that content creators surrender ownership to the distributors, rather than licensing distribution rights, as is currently done. This just seems to be a way for big media to reassert their strangle hold on
It's rather odd that anyone sees a need (Score:2, Insightful)
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I think the most fundamental change is actually that your second axiom ("giving creators cont
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This is the UN, right? (Score:2)
The disconnect between the UN and reality seems wider every day.
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Anonymity, we hardly knew ye... (Score:2)
Really, laws regulations and initiatives like this (and this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org] and this [slashdot.org]) make it increasingly necessary for the Powers that Be(tm) to think about criminalizing online anonymity altogether, lest the bureaucracy be powerless to enforce their will.
And with so few people who even know they should care about this, who's to stop it? Unless Tor [eff.org] and I2P [i2p.net] get encapsulated within programs that millions of people use (à la Torpark [torrify.com]), well... if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it...
Treaties (Score:2)
What a great way to keep The People out of the process. Also a great way for politicians to deny responsibility. When I become Overlord, expect many more treaties.
WIPO (Score:2)
So if Disney likes (Score:1)
even public domain content (Score:2)
What a farce.
Too bad this happened so late (Score:2)
The incredibly helpful railroad lobby... (Score:1)
The WIPO Must Be Abolished (Score:2)