Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights: Twenty-Eighth Session
SCCR/28 June 30 to July 4, 2014 (Geneva, Switzerland)
June 30, 2014 Statements of the USA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: […] the United States was very pleased by the progress that we made at the last session of the SCCR, and we are looking forward to continuing to move forward this week in clarifying and improving the proposals before us.
We support fully the statement of Group B, and we also wanted to add that we continue to believe that the best way forward to finding consensus on the broadcasters issue is to focus on a narrow treaty based on the core need of broadcasters for protection from signal piracy.
Toward that end, we have proposed, as everyone knows, pursuing an approach that involves a single right to authorize the simultaneous or near simultaneous transmission of signal to the public over any medium. In our view this approach could permit cutting through the long standing divergence in proposals here, and finally achieving an international agreement.
So just to say that the key advantages to this approach include, first of all, that it’s modern, that it recognizes the importance of the new technologies that are used for engaging in signal piracy, and it avoids a number of negatives as to which concerns have been expressed in the discussions here. It avoids, first of all, a new layer of protection for the content that is broadcast. It is clear that the right would be limited to protection for the signal and not to the content contained in fixations of the broadcast. It would also avoid interference with the rights of the right holders in the content that was broadcast and it would avoid any impact on consumers who were engaged in private activities such as home copying.
So we have been quite gratified by interest shown in this potential approach by many other delegations. As to next steps this week, we found that the charts prepared and presented by the Secretariat at the last session were extremely helpful, and first of all, on the subject matter of protection, which is Article 6 in the drafts, we believe that meaningful progress here will require a shared understanding of what exactly we are seeking to protect. Now, as we heard from the BBC in its presentation at the last session, nature of the activities of traditional broadcasting organizations is evolving, and they are increasingly using new technologies in delivering their services.
We believe that the sine que non for being able to undertake negotiations, it’s our belief in knowing the different sizes and broadcasters not just the BBC and that will allow us to see what options are, to include in the subject matter of protection.
For example, one question is, are all broadcasters engaging in simulcasting, and another question, are all broadcasters or only a small group of them engaging in web originated transmissions? Having answers to those questions would make it possible to clarify our respective positions for negotiation.
It may well be that we’ll find out that most delegations would consider protecting simulcasting but would rule out pure webcasting and the US in particular, has not renewed our 2006 proposal to protect pure webcasting.
The discussions at the last session took us a considerable way towards these answers, but some more work remains to be done to achieve the necessary understanding. So what we would propose is that we conclude this clarification exercise but do so without unnecessary delay in our discussions, mindful of the desire by my delegations not to use up too much of our limited time. We would suggest devoting half a day at the next session to finishing this clarification exercise, and we would propose doing so in two ways, one is we have taken a look at the 2002 technical background paper prepared by the Secretariat in which part three talks about broadcasting organizations and new technologies.
If the Secretariat could update this document informally through a survey of how different sizes and types of broadcasters are using new technologies,that would be very helpful, and it would be useful to have what could be just an oral informal report by the next session of the standing committee, because a lot has changed in the last 12 years since that report was prepared.
We also think it would be useful to have technical presentations from experts about what broadcasters of other types and sizes than the BBC and from other regions are doing with an opportunity for interaction and discussion.
And, again, we think that both of these things could be done within half a day at the next session.
We do think that this investment of half a day’s time would prove to actually let our discussions move more quickly toward preparation for negotiations.
So that’s Article 6. And then on Article 9 which is the rights to be covered again we think the chart from the last session was very helpful in providing a comparison of different approaches and proposals. We think that further analysis using that framework can serve to move us closer together and to further know the scope of the rights to be negotiated. We remain convinced that a narrower scope of rights will make it more possible for the standing committee to be able to recommend convening a diplomatic conference. So just to conclude, we are optimistic that continuing the discussion this week will move us in a positive direction toward developing a text for association.