Anne Leer is the WIPO Deputy Director General for Culture and Creative Industries Sector, where she leads WIPO’s activities in the field of copyright and related rights. Not a familiar figure at WIPO, she joined the organisation in December 2014, coming from the commercial side of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In addition to the BBC, she had previously worked for Paramount, Oxford University Press, and Financial Times/Pearson and Prentice Hall. This is her second Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meeting, and she knows few of the actors, and it seems, even less of the issues.
Her first signature move was to organize Monday’s full day informational session on the broadcast treaty, which was chaired by John Simpson of the BBC, and featured lobbyists or business executives from broadcasters from India, Brazil, the Caribbean and the England based Africa News Networks. The choice of the India and Brazil broadcasters were widely seen as an effort to pressure those two countries to accept the broadcasters demands for broader and wider rights, that are opposed by copyright holders and consumers. She attended that whole session. On Tuesday, the 2nd day of SCCR 30, member states began to discuss the issues in the negotiations. The broadcast negotiations have gone on for a very long time, and among the most contentious issues, for more than a decade, has been the extent to which, if any, the treaty will cover the delivery information over the Internet — something that has extensive opposition. There is also deep opposition to the broadcasting right among countries that did not sign the Rome Convention, or among copyright holders, performers, technology companies and consumer groups, who for a variety of reasons, don’t want a new layer of rights on top of copyright.
Leer skipped almost all of the member state or NGO interventions on Tuesday, and showed up at the end of the day, when definitions were being discussed, and surprised everyone by lecturing the delegates on the need to expand the treaty to the Internet, along the lines that her former employer, the BBC, was lobbying. This is the transcript from her intervention:
Well, I understand that you have had a very long and hopefully a very and productive day and I apologize for not being able to be in the room all day. But I came at the tail end when you talked about the very, very important point of the definition, the object of protection and the definition of what a broadcaster is. And what broadcasting is and there was just one thing that I think concerned me a little bit because you seemed to have now excluded it says broadcasting shall be not be understood as including transmissions over computer Networks. Does that mean the Internet? If it does, it kind of — if we remember all the presentations from the expert panel yesterday all the broadcasters that were there and broadcasters in general today view Internet as the main platform for distribution of their broadcast in the near future. And many of them have already migrated over to streaming and downloading over Internet. So I just wondered whether that is something that has been discussed earlier today or something that you are currently thinking of and discussing today and tomorrow.Otherwise I thought maybe a useful definition that was discussed yesterday was broadcasters are different from pipe owners and those who own the distribution channels. Broadcasters invest in original content. And I just wondered whether that is maybe a useful addition to defining who a broadcaster is. A broadcaster is somebody who invests in original content. And/or copyright holder, a rightsholder of copyright content. Bearing in mine that this is comments that are coming from me when I have not been party to this discussion. Forgive me if you have touched on this in your discussion. I hope you feel you are moving forward and making progress. It is a very important time for the broadcasting Treaty on the SCCR Committee. It has been on the agenda it is the 17th year now. I hope that we are moving forward to what is fruiteful and meaningful conclusion for all of you. Thank you very much Chair.
Of course if a broadcaster has “created original content”, the broadcaster already owns the copyright on the work being transmitted!
In the many years I have attended WIPO committee meetings I rarely witness such bluntness from the secretariat, particularly from someone who seems to know so little about the substance and history of the negotiations. We will find out tomorrow if this had any effect on the delegates.