News

WIPO Broadcast Treaty Lurches Forward

Reports from Geneva indicate that five days of discussion at WIPO has led to a compromise on the proposed Broadcasting Treaty with a two-track approach that removes highly contentious webcast  provisions from the conventional broadcast treaty.  While this is good news, the entire broadcast treaty is a solution in search of a problem. It does great harm to the notion of copyright protection for creators given that protection is granted for decades based merely on the financial investment of broadcasters.  Where does Canada stand on the broadcast treaty?  It is hard to tell, given that we've had no public consultations and the Canadian delegation says little during the debates.  A good guess is that the government is a tepid supporter, but Canadians shouldn't have to guess.

Update: The Ottawa Citizen picks up on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty and broader copyright reform in an op-ed today.

3 Comments

  1. Michael_S says:

    Paywall
    Argh. The OC article is behind a paywall. Can MG or anyone link or post the story or at least the highlights from it?

  2. James Love says:

    How do we see the op-ed?

  3. Bill Poulin says:

    I wrote to Alan Rock (via email) to ask him to take a serious look at this treaty before evaluating it. I know I’m just a lowly citzen ad all, but still… no response at all?