The Delegation of India made the following elegant but extremely to the point statement:
Opening Statement by India on the Broadcasting Treaty at the 31st session of the Standing Committee Copyright and Related Rights at WIPO on 7 December 2015, delivered by Dr. Sumit Seth, First Secretary (Economic)Thank your Mr. Chairman
I’m speaking in my national capacity and not as Regional Coordinator. We are happy to see you again, chairing the 31st session of the SCCR. We trust your stewardship and hope that you will be able to guide the committee in the desired direction. We would also like to commend the Secretariat for making excellent arrangements for this meeting including providing live automated transcripts of the statements.
My delegation would like to put a formal request to the WIPO secretariat to also provide automated transcripts for other meetings of important committees of WIPO.
Mr. Chair
India has played a constructive role in the deliberations of the past SCCR meetings so that we can reach a common understanding that will lead to an effective instrument for the broadcasting sector. India takes pride in having a truly diverse and dynamic broadcasting sector, which not only caters to more than a billion internal users but also to millions of Indian Diaspora as well as other foreign users.
Delegation of India has maintained its position that the proposed broadcasting treaty should be in conformity with the mandate of the 2007 General Assembly which is broadcasting and cable-casting in the traditional sense adopting signal based approach.
Delegation of India would like to reiterate its position that such foundation of rights to protect signals legitimately emanating from the broadcasters including that of the right to prohibit unauthorized retransmission of live signals over computer networks or any other digital or online platforms.
The above position also makes it clear that India does not support the inclusion of webcasting and simulcasting under the framework of the treaty as it is not part of the WIPO General Assembly mandate of broadcasting in the traditional sense.
Mr. Chair,
The proposed treaty should not accord any additional layer of rights to broadcasters at the cost of the content owners, and it should not be a ‘blanket right’ but rather as a ‘right to prohibit’ based on the acquisition of the ‘content rights.’
India reiterates that there cannot be any post-fixation rights to be allowed under this proposed treaty as the scope of protection covers only signal protection. However, it is flexible to consider about fixation for rebroadcasting and time-shifting purposes.
This treaty should provide for exceptions to the protection in case of private use; use of short excerpts in connection with the reporting of current events; use solely for education and scientific research; and ephemeral fixation by a broadcasting organization using its facilities and for its own broadcasts.
Mr. Chair
Delegation of India is ready to engage constructively with members holding divergent views on this subject. Our aim is to maintain an equilibrium of the copyright issues of content owners, rights of the disseminators that is the broadcasters and the consumers that is the public at large.I thank you Mr. Chair for the opportunity