The world's first Webcasting treaty was approved by the World Intellectual Property Organization's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, but it's coming under scrutiny over whether it might choke off online transmission of material in the public domain.
Proposed by the Bush Administration and backed by Yahoo, the Digital Media Association, and other American Webcasters, the treaty aims at giving Webcasters the same international intellectual property protection now enjoyed by television and radio broadcasters, according to CNET, but critics fear that anyone seeing a Webcast of material falling outside copyright – like government-created documentaries or very old movies or audio recordings like classic radio broadcasts – won't be able to store or distribute the materials freely.
"Say there's a film that's out of copyright and in the public domain, but it's in the vault of some movie studio," said the Consumer Project on Technology's Jamie Love to CNET. "If you got it from the broadcast, you're not allowed to make a copy. You have to go to the original source." Love also said some countries consider sporting events in the public domain but the treaty – if passed in final version by WIPO member nations – would give Webcasters and television broadcasters the right to block their retransmission.
"Broadcasters see this as a way to extend rights to noncopyrighted information," she told the tech news Website.
But supporters like Digital Media Association attorney Seth Greenstein – whose group members include America Online, FullAudio, RealNetworks, and Yahoo – said the treaty is needed to protect Webcasters' rights in WIPO nations lacking the kind of copyright laws the U.S. has. "Because Webcasting is already delivered by digital networks, it's particularly susceptible to retransmission via the Internet," he told CNET. "So far, a number of Internet companies have successfully used technological fixes to thwart piracy of their signal, but it would be more effective if those technological fixes were supported by legal prohibitions and remedies as well."
