The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR27) is currently discussing Article 6 (Scope of Application) of the working text of the proposed Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (SCCR/27/2).
The United States of America delivered this nuanced intervention on the Scope of Application.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to first address the question posed by my colleague from India as to whether we are still operating within the scope of the General Assembly’s mandate and only to say that we agree that we need to be working within that mandate, and the way that we see the discussion that we’re currently engaged in, it is a question of interpreting the mandate, and so the two issues we see as needing discussion are, first of all, what is broadcasting in a traditional sense, and if you’ve got over-the-air broadcast that also in some way implicates or using Internet technology, does that still qualify as broadcasting in the traditional sense? And second, what is a signal-based approach? And once there’s been a fixation, is it still a signal-based approach? We tend to think not, but it appears that’s not necessarily everyone’s interpretation.That’s my first point. The second point is that we think it is imperative that we achieve greater clarification on what we all mean when we talk about this concept, and we see that as the greatest goal of this session, so not so much working on specific language as trying to achieve a better mutual understanding of what exactly it is we are talking about and dealing with so that we then will be equipped for further negotiations.
Toward that end, we would very much like to hear some answers to the questions that we raised from the broadcasters as you suggested, Mr. Chair. We also know that as to Brazil’s and Canada’s question about whether, in the case of the on-demand transmission of a broadcasting program or the deferred and changed transmission, whether we are still talking about signal protection, after it’s been fixed and then something is done with the fixation, we agree with that concern, and one of the reasons we’d like to have further discussion about it is that we are hearing some delegations that they say that they see this as being part of the issue of the adequacy of protection for the signal, and if that’s the case, we want to understand more, and that’s why I posed the question where and how piracy takes place on all of these platforms, and I think that may not resolve the concern, but it would help us understand the views of other delegations. In terms of the UK’s point about being able to assert rights and enforce rights that have been granted by license, perhaps there the issue is really one of standing to sue based on contractual rights rather than the issue of creating new legal rights at international level.
So I wonder if it might be hopefully addressed from that perspective. So ultimately, I think many of us feel we may need more of this information and better enlightenment of our understanding on these questions before we are ready to take any definitive positions on the alternatives in ‘6. We do want to move — in Article 6. We do want to move forward and hope we can use this week to do that, to understand each other better and narrow our areas of differences for further consideration. But we do feel it’s critical to have a firm framework of understanding in place before we are really able to move forward toward finalizing language for negotiation.