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Boyle on Webcasters and WIPO 82

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the adversity-is-good-for-the-soul dept.
pjones writes "It's always amazing to see an article in Financial Times that supports webcasters and open source, but James Boyle sticks it to the World Intellectual Property Organization in his latest article, "More rights are wrong for webcasters." Boyle lays it out so that "economists, political scientists and people who simply want to make money" can get what's wrong."
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Boyle on Webcasters and WIPO More

Boyle on Webcasters and WIPO

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  • If nobody obeys the law.. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    then there is no law.

    The only people I have seen really respect WIPO and other treaties are those who make money from or directly with IP. This is because they know they will be sued into oblivion. (and even then)

    Unless governments start throwing people in jail for 25 years.. I doubt anyone in the not-for-profit blogging and web/podcasting communities really care what these people think. And even if they DO start throwing people in jail for 25 years for trivial offenses, we all know how well that worked for

    • Re:If nobody obeys the law.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by plasmacutter ( 901737 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @03:40AM (#13656768)
      The war on drugs did accomplish something for nixon and his party.

      The drug bills he rammed through congress circumvent the constitution by giving congressional/legislative authority to unaccountable fda staff.
      Thanks to this law a cabal of fda hanchos are able to make any drug they please illegal to even research in direct violation of the constitution, which states affirmatively that congress and congress alone shall have the right to create permanent regulations.
      • Over 25% of Black men in America are "in the (penal) system". The drug laws have created hundreds of thousands of nonviolent felons, especially Black and Hispanic men. Those men cannot vote, and are impaired in competing with other people for jobs. That's one simple method for converting customs between consenting adults into a permanent underclass. Thanks, Dick!

    • Re:If nobody obeys the law.. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Kinda sad. Oh well.
      you misspelt Orwell. when you have a international org peddling its agenda to other coutries with the help of the biggest war machine in the world, it's called Orwell. war is peace.

  • Beating the Right's drum: Rights vs Entitlements (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ReformedExCon ( 897248 ) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @03:17AM (#13656713)
    WIPO has confused the issue, and Boyle does little to clear it up. The term "right" has been used in place of "entitlement" or "monopoly" to describe the expanded ability of a broadcaster to claim public domain works as their own for 20 years. This is not a right, this is a reduction in rights of everyone else. It is an entitlement, an entitlement to something that no one else will be allowed to have. It gives broadcasters a monopoly on works that they did not create. Boyle is correct in saying that this is bad policy. Anyone with eyes can see it as so.

    But he also tackles the issue from a strange direction. He sees law and policy as a means to an end rather than the description and implementation of a general principle. Laws should reflect the general will of the people, in my opinion, rather than be used to reach a specific outcome. By requiring that laws need a specific goal (in this case to expand broadcast network infrastructure), we leave ourselves open to exactly the problem of industrial horse-trading that Boyle seeks to avoid. If Boyle really believes that these laws are wrong, why does he attack it on the effects it will have rather than on the general principle?

    The problem is that by granting special "copyright" to public domain works to broadcasters, it effectively removes those works from the public domain. As a result, the freedom to access or otherwise use those works becomes infringed. This is not a matter of the new rules having no positive effect. It is a matter of reducing the amount of freedoms of everyone except a handful of quick-moving broadcasters. That is the principle at stake here, not some untestable hypothesis regarding the reduced likelihood of new networks being set up.

    This is, as Boyle points out, a bad direction on the part of WIPO. It is unnecessary and harms the freedoms of almost all involved. However, fighting this encroachment of rights should not be waged on an effects basis because then we become the horse-traders that Boyle seems to despise. Instead it is necessary to confront this on the basis of first principles from which can be developed a sane and equitable intellectual property policy.
    • Very well stated. Any time we try to create legislation to accomplish a specific end, we open up the door to a host of unintended consequences and abuses. The cure often ends up being worse than the disease.
    • I agree with your perspective that he does not clear the issue up, but he does question it and rather eloquently. My question is, has he done the same with the DMCA section 1201 tech mandate which shares the same origin? From what I see he does not. I'd really like to see less hypocracy from pundits..
    • > He sees law and policy as a means to an end rather than the description and implementation of a
      > general principle

      Well, approaching this issue in the same direction as those who pass the law is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if your goal is to deconstruct this view. You show how the policies created with this mindset fail. He seems to be doing this job fairly well. Even the constitution states that copyright law exists to further the sciences and arts thus being to achieve an objective a

    • He sees law and policy as a means to an end rather than the description and implementation of a general principle.

      "The Congress shall have power: ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries."

      This from a group that is generally acknowledged to have opposed monopolies on principle.
    • " WIPO has confused the issue, and Boyle does little to clear it up."

      No kidding. I think I understand it less after reading the article than I did previously and previously I was unaware of the issue.

      Does this mean that (if this had been in force in the US) a TV station in New York could put on their own production of one of Shakespeare's works or Beethoven's symphonies, and then forbid any other station in the US from doing the same for 20 years? 'Cause that's what it sounds like, and I can't see how any

  • Monopoly (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They know it's wrong. They don't need to be told. It just pays better than doing the right thing. Heck, in this society, doing what pays better IS the right thing. They'll stop when angry starving peasants start sticking pitchforks up their elitist asses. No sooner, no later.

  • Is it that amazing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @03:33AM (#13656745)
    It seems logical that the FT would be on the side of business - and of course, they are. Virtually their entire readership would agree that making money is a good thing.

    However, taken as a whole, entrenched monopolies and cartels are not good for business. Small businesses and startups are essential for the economy, especially in fast growing sectors. Economists know this. As such, it's not all that surprising that the FT will take a stance that is against that of the multinationals.

    • Re:Is it that amazing? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, you may be suprised to find that in the movie Manufacturing Consent, someone hands Noam Chomsky a copy of the Financial Times as he disembarks a plane in the UK and he remarks "Ah, the Financial Times. The only newspaper to tell the truth".

  • Hmmm (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm glad that the article mentions the fact that the United States didn't sign the original extension beyond copyright which prevented redistribution. The same reaons to sign that extension then are being used now by broadcasters--mainly that they have to have incentive to grow their networks. Increasing these rights to 30 years and adding a whole host of unenforcable laws is just going to make the lawyers happy. The truth is that a new business model needs to be designed which can deal with the technologic

  • Financial Times: Digital Business & Open Sourc (Score:5, Informative)

    by joelparker ( 586428 ) <joel@school.net> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @03:35AM (#13656754) Homepage
    It's always amazing to see an article in Financial Times that supports webcasters and open source

    Then be more amazed:
    How open source gave power to the people [ft.com]
    By Richard Waters, September 19 2005

    The sedentary art of software development and the extreme sports of kitesurfing, sailplaning and canyoning would appear to have little in common.

    However, both are examples of a new force that could eventually affect a far broader range of companies and industries: the power of users to shape how products are developed.

    More... [ft.com]

  • Boyle on Webcasters? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A pox on you too, buddy!
  • Is it moral to let millions die in name of patents. They argue that if patents are not respected then there wont be money for new medical research, well thats crap, medical research should be funded, period.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I propose we tax everybody. Gee, that wasn't very hard, was it.
        • I propose you get your ass back to the drawing board before you volunteer MY money for your silly ideas. Do I look like a VC to you?
          • Doing research that will result in cheap drugs that save millions of lives throughout the world is not a silly idea. It may not be a profitable idea, but "silly" and "not profitable" are not synonyms.

            Starting a land war in Asia on completel made-up premises, now that's a silly idea.

            • Doing research that will result in cheap drugs that save millions of lives throughout the world is not a silly idea. It may not be a profitable idea, but "silly" and "not profitable" are not synonyms.

              Ideas should be funded voluntarily by the people who believe in them, not by forcing people who do not agree to pay for them.

              Or do you have some idea of how we can determine whose ideas are best and convince everyone else? If you can't convince others your ideas have merit, then you're on your own. You have no

              • Ideas should be funded voluntarily by the people who believe in them, not by forcing people who do not agree to pay for them.

                Well, if you take that as an axiom, we're never going to agree.

                Having said that, was the Apollo program funded by subscriptions?
                How about the Grand Coulee Dam, or the Interstate system?

                And where do I sign up to have get a refund on the proportion of my taxes spent invading Iraq, or buying public school science textbooks that teach Intelligent Design, or any number of the government

                • Well, if you take that as an axiom, we're never going to agree.

                  I guess I'll have to live with that.

                  With regard to your examples, I wouldn't be averse to eliminating public funding for them, at least without an overwhelming vote (> 90 %, which is of course impossible). If we all get refunds for programs with which we disagree, or never fund them in the first place, then we can use those resources to fund the programs with which we do agree. You spend on what you want, I spend on what I want. Sounds fair

                  • "If we all get refunds for programs with which we disagree, or never fund them in the first place, then we can use those resources to fund the programs with which we do agree."

                    First, the people who actually make the decisions just might have a slightly better idea of what research grants require funding than you do. Or are you up on the latest in protein folding and its relationship to auto-immune research?

                    And second, would you, or Joe Sixpack, take that "refund" and actually fund any research? Or would

                    • First, the people who actually make the decisions just might have a slightly better idea of what research grants require funding than you do. Or are you up on the latest in protein folding and its relationship to auto-immune research?

                      Certainly possible. But who decides who has the better idea? Their peers? My peers? Who?

                      And second, would you, or Joe Sixpack, take that "refund" and actually fund any research? Or would it be much more likely that the only thing funded is a few more cases of beer and a l

                    • Their insurance company might.
                    • "Or is their some group favored with superior decison making ability which should be allowed to make their decisions for them?"

                      Yes. Your representitives are elected and paid to make those decisions for the "greater good" of the nation. They, in turn, elect to give money to, say, the National Science Foundation, whose boards study research grants and select the ones to fund.

                      So "superior decison making ability" translates to "those knowledgeable in the field of study", who, unlike you, are qualified to ma

                    • You didn't tell me how good a job you think they would do. Did you forget?
                    • Piss on the "greater good" (If you really beleive such a thing exists, I have a 6-foot tall rabbit who wants to sell you a bridge) if it comes at the cost of extortion.

                      Maybe your naive enough to think your "representatives" do anything of the sort, but don't drag the rest of us down into your private hell.
                  • It's nice to see that, even on the internet, people with wildly different opinions can be civil to one another. And in that spirit, I'd like to apologise for the schmo who posted a rude follow up to your comments.

                    If everyone thought the same, there'd be no need for mixed biscuit assortments.
              • Who do U think today is deciding where to put money for research and on what basis.
        • And how will those funds be distributed? Will money go to everyone who contributed to the medication? How about those who contributed indirectly? Who will get how much? What about medication for very rare conditions? What about medication that is only a slight improvement over existing medication? What if that slight improvement is a big improvement for a small group of people? What if the medication is a big improvement, but it's not used much, because the hospitals have contracts for other medication?

          Do y
      • I'd certainly support being taxed for it (if all/any the profits also went back into funding it). It's my health, why the hell shouldn't I support it? Or is letting people die of numerous diseases, because mostly only the poor people suffer from them, a situation you like to keep around?
      • Easy. Tax private healthcare twice: a tax on the insurance premia, and a tax on the treatment costs. Use this money to fund the NHS. Withdraw the licences of any practitioner who will not accept patients on the NHS. Give each country's NHS the authority to override intellectual property privileges {they aren't "rights" by any stretch of the imagination} in respect of any potentially life-saving device or drug.

        What the public doesn't realise, and nobody in big pharma is keen to let on, is that most
        • for example, NeoClarityn was only invented because the patent on Clarityn was about to expire

          This looks like a good thing to me. Either NeoClarityn is no better than standard Clarityn (and the generics should sell well), or NC is a better drug developed because we have limited patent times.

        • Give each country's NHS the authority to override intellectual property privileges {they aren't "rights" by any stretch of the imagination} in respect of any potentially life-saving device or drug.

          But would we have a problem that this would discourage life saving medication?
          • Companies are dissuaded from massive profiteering in making life-saving pharmaceuticals while still making profits from supplying some drugs, but to those who can't afford life-saving medicine at a time of need, it's great.
          • No, because most of life-saving medications we need already exist. Most of what the big pharmaceutical companies are doing is just re-inventing the wheel, using different colour hub caps. {And littering the way with animal corpses to boot}. What is required is for people to adopt genuinely -- as opposed to apparently -- healthier lifestyles. And a naturally healthier lifestyle is almost invariably cheaper than an unhealthy one. For instance, walking or cycling not only save you petrol, they give you na

            • Unfortunately, there's no money in that for big business; ...

              My friend, there is money for big business in anything people are willing to pay for, and no money for those things they are not willing to pay for. You have a problem with other peoples' ideas of what is worth paying for. Unfortunately, you have no right to overrule them. It's a remarkably democratic system; people are allowed to vote with their dollars for their choices. And they acquired those dollars because other people voted for them wit

  • Make more rights (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @04:11AM (#13656832)
    Heck, I don't think there are enough monopolies, lets have more!

    UPS should be able to own the packages it ships for an exclusive 50 year period.
    Web-Email providers should be able to own my emails for 50 year period just because I read them over the Internet.
    ISPs should be able to own everything sent over their networks for 50 years.
    I should be able to setup an open WIFI hotspot and own rights over anything anyone sends through it, for 50 years.
    What about supermarkets? They should be able to say how you use their produce, for example: "you shall only use this Walmart pasta sauce with official Walmart pasta".

    We need more exclusive IP rights holders, because IP rights are the cause of Americas huge trade surplus.
    • hejdig.

      We should also pay money to the postal office every time we use email since they lose money on every email sent.
      Wait! we should pay Panasonic, HP and Xerox and all other fax machine producers since they lose money on every email we send.

      And the postal office should pay the telegraph company. And the fax machine factories should pay the telex machine factories.

      And the telex machine factories should pay the postal offices.

      /OF

      • Re:Make more rights (Score:5, Insightful)

        by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @05:03AM (#13656923) Journal
        You forgot: Every time you write or type something yourself, a secretary who could have typed it for you loses money. Therefore production of any text which is not typed by a secretary should be charged a "secretary tax" to support those poor secretaries who lose money due to the self-writing of text.

        Ah, and of course there should be a public transportation tax on private cars, because owners of private cars won't use public transportation as often as non-owners. The possible results can be seen on horse-carriages. Due to all those car-owners the horse-carriage business basically broke down. Now imagine there would have been a transportation tax payed to the horse-carriage makers for every car sold, and likewise a tax on petrol payed to the coachmen, to compensate them for the loss they made due to people driving cars, imagine where the horse-carriage industry would be now. Not to mention DRM measures you could have put into cars to save the railway industry. For example a regulation that you have to buy licenses from the railway companies to drive your cars, and the cars would have mechanisms which switch off the motor if you try to drive more miles than you have payed for.

        • Re:Make more rights (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
          Ah, and of course there should be a public transportation tax on private cars, because owners of private cars won't use public transportation as often as non-owners.

          We already have this. It's called road tax and fuel tax. Some goes to subsidies public transport directly, some indirectly (e.g. by paying to repair the roads that the busses use). Not that I'm against this concept - running a car is both socially and environmentally irresponsible - the problem is that the subsidy (in the UK, at least) sti

        • Because for every secretary that could be employed to type the words that I am writing, there could be another secretary that could be the secretary's secretary, typing up things like what I am writing for tse. Therefor production of any text which is not typed by a secretary typing for a secretary should be charged a "secretary's secretary tax", to support those poor secretaries of secretaries who lose money due to the single-secretary writing of text.
      • We should also pay money to the postal office every time we use email since they lose money on every email sent.

        Poor analogy. Try: if the ISPs start charging $2 per email sent, then it would be in the public interest for our Post Office to start offering a free or very cheap email service.

        If the drug companies insist on making 700% profit on drugs that they develop, then our government should step-in and conduct/finance "open source" drug development. And before anyone says that the drug companies ne

        • hejdig.

          >>We should also pay money to the postal office every time we use
          >>email since they lose money on every email sent.

          >Poor analogy. Try: if the ISPs start charging $2 per email sent, then
          >it would be in the public interest for our Post Office to start offering
          >a free or very cheap email service.

          The analogy is good. New products or new ways of getting paid sometimes makes older products or ways to make money obsolete. Charging money for every email sent is going back
        • One big thing that needs to get balanced out is the role of the FDA. On one hand, I think it would be unwise to abolish the FDA, and go completely without testing or certification. On the other hand, though, strict FDA regulations create a barrier to smaller outfits, as well as constrict the types of possible cures and medications.

          How about this? - Drug companies must publish the results of any tests they perform on a drug, but they are not required to perform tests (beyond a limited "not rat poison" test,

    • Wow, Mod Parent Up (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rocketship Underpant ( 804162 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @05:20AM (#13656965)
      It's great that people are starting to see "intellectual property" is just another way for corporations and crooks to control people's data and behaviour once the product leaves the producer's hands. Most of the examples given could come true, and we'd have all the corporate shills telling us that Walmart's pasta sauce is "licensed" and not sold, or some such nonsense.

  • What's the Payoff? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @04:30AM (#13656874) Homepage Journal
    I can't remember the name of the bankrobber, but I do remember a bankrobber responding to the question: "Why do you rob banks?" The robber responded: "Because that's where the money is?"

    So where's the money in this festering mess? Is it possibly in the tax base? Expanded IP expands the tax base at a loss to the public interest. IP marks a clear paper trail as to who owns what and what can be expected in terms of revenue and, in turn, tax revenue.

    Big government requires big tax revenues and what better to "sell off" than the cultural and intellectual heritage of it's constituents. The infrastructure to oversee IP is minimal while the tax gain is substantial. Basically it's a big tax grab. Maybe it'll be pay raises all around for our elected representatives.

    • Re:Willie Sutton (Score:2, Informative)

      by charleyb123 ( 618476 )
      That's a famous quote from Willie Sutton, in the 1930's (USA). FYI, it's the *classic* example of for why lawyers are told to *never* put their defendant on the stand in a trial (because it was a stupid admission of guilt after the prosecutor lulled the defendant into confident and cocky behavior on the stand). On Willie's life: http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/sutton /sutton.htm>

    • Not only is it the cultural and intellectual heritage of its citizens being sold here, but the rights and freedoms of its citizens as well. Copyrights and patents are a form of restriction on freedom of speech that is sanctioned because it is supposed to provide a useful purpose for the government's constituency, i.e. the granting of a temporary monopoly to the creator of a published work or an invention is supposed to provide a financial incentive to the creator to produce more works or inventions. Apart

    • The problem is that information can be viewed as a property or as communication. Both points of view are correct and both points of view are wrong.

      If information cannot be communicated, it doesn't exist. If you have no information to communicate you have no communication, By trying to restrict the communication of information by locking it up, (say, in my case, by saying that articles still belong to the publisher when that publisher has ceased to exist,) they are debasing their own stock.

      These two views o
      • Well, I think the one thing that the digital age, and the concept of computer "data" has done, is to muddy the distinction between "information" and "entertainment" (or "content", "presentation", "expression", and the like). Although an MP3 file, for instance, may be considered "information" or "data" to a computer -- the MP3 player app is "informed" how to instruct the sound card -- but to a human, the actual "information" in the song is a very small slice of the actual content. What's the "information" in

  • Since he dislikes intellectual property laws... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @05:02AM (#13656921)
    James Boyle: More rights are wrong for webcasters
    >By James Boyle
    >Published: September 26 2005 18:58 | Last updated: September 26 2005 18:58
    >>

    I teach intellectual property law, a subject that is attracting attention from economists, political scientists and people who simply want to make money. These, after all, are the rules that define the hightechnology marketplace. Are we doing a good job of writing those rules? The answer is no. Three tendencies stand out.

    First and most lamentably, intellectual property laws are created without any empirical evidence that they are necessary or that they will help rather than hurt. Second, the policymaking process has failed to keep track of the increasing importance of intellectual property rights to everything from freedom of expression and communications policy to economic development or access to educational materials. We still make law as though it were just a deal brokered between industry groups - balancing the interests of content companies with those of broadcasters, for example. The public interest in competition, access, free speech and vigorous technological markets takes a back seat. What matters is making the big boys happy. Finally, communications networks are increasingly built around intellectual property rules, as law regulates technology more and more directly; not always to good effect.

    The World Intellectual Property Organisation has now managed to combine all three lamentable tendencies at once. The Broadcasting and Webcasting Treaty, currently being debated in Geneva, is an IP hat trick.

    Much of what is broadcast over the airwaves is copyrighted - the broadcaster licenses the film or song from a copyright holder and then plays it to you at home. What you probably do not know is that nearly 50 years ago broadcasters in some countries got an additional right, layered on top of the copyright. Even if the material being broadcast was in the public domain, or the copyright holder had no objection to redistribution, the broadcaster was given a legal right to prevent it - a 20-year period of exclusivity. The ostensible reason was to encourage broadcasters to invest in new networks. The US did not sign this treaty. Has the US broadcast industry stagnated, crippled by the possibility that their signals will be pirated? Hardly. Copyright works well and no additional right has proved necessary. Has WIPO commissioned empirical studies to see if the right was necessary, comparing those nations that adopted it with those that did not? Of course not. This is intellectual property policy: we do not need facts. We can create monopolies on faith.

    But now a new diplomatic conference is being convened to reopen the issue. Doubtless the goal is to abolish this right? There was never any empirical evidence behind it. Broadcasters in countries that did not adopt it have flourished, albeit casting envious eyes to the legal monopolies possessed by their counterparts in more credulous nations whose politicians are more deeply in the pockets of broadcasting interests. The right imposes considerable costs. It adds yet another layer of clearances that must be gained before material can be digitised or redistributed - compounding the existing problems of "orphan works", those whose owners cannot be identified. So is the broadcast right on the way out? No.

    In the funhouse world that is intellectual property policy, WIPO is considering a proposal to expand the length of the right by 30 years and a US-backed initiative to apply it to webcasts as well. After all, we know that the internet is growing so slowly. Clearly what is needed is an entirely new legal monopoly, on top of copyright, so that there are even more middlemen, even deeper thickets of rights.

    What is the rationale for this proposal? Parity: "If the broadcasters have the right, we should too." But wait. There was never any evidence that even broadcasters needed the right. And the capital requirements and business models of the two industries are entirely dif
  • It's unfortunate that the masses have to succumb to the decisions of the elite. The elite who likely don't use the technology they are so afraid of. The elite who don't believe that anyone should have access to anything unless there is an exchange of payment in some form. It's too bad that they didn't learn anything from all those hours in college and all of the shared knowledge and experienced they gained so much from. For without the sharing of knowledge our society would be a hapless group of lemming
  • Would copyleft music throw a monkey wrench into the schemes of these broadcasters?

    all the best,

    drew
    --
    http://www.ourmedia.org/node/63600 [ourmedia.org]
  • What ideas will be left that aren't patented, copyrighted and/or DRMed in 20 years? How much of the penny will WIPO and governments eventually shave to adminstrate all of this? I'm not even sure more broadcast/webcast rules do anything good even for big media.

  • RIghts About Now (Score:5, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @08:45AM (#13657797) Homepage Journal
    The article doesn't discuss just "more rights" for just any "webcaster". It specifically talks about how a "US-backed initiative" is designed to turn a 30-year "exclusive right to broadcast certain content" that some broadcasters in some (non-US) countries enjoy into an 80-year worldwide right for all webcasters. That broadcaster would, apparently, mean that webcasting a song or show would entitle a single webcaster to own it for a (long) lifetime - presumably when the time will be extended. That content includes even public domain content, stealing it from the public for a single webcaster. It's insane, and it seems like it will become the global content monopoly law.

    Webcasters do need more rights, just not at the very top like that insane monopoly law. At the bottom, webcasters must pay a minimum $500:year to stream copyrighted content. Per-play rates are $0.0007:listen for songs. That's $90:year for a 24/7/365 listener, so webcasters would have to stream continuously to at least 6, or more like 20-50 listeners just to afford the "blanket" rates.

    Nevermind that the per-play rates are created by dividing the total purchase price of Broadcast.com by Yahoo by the number of songs in Broadcast.com's library, so per-play rates are equal to the price Yahoo paid for unlimited plays. Or that the sale was in Yahoo stock at their most hyperinflated bubble price, and the value of the rest of Broadcast.com in addition to the songs, all counted as value of the songs. Those rates are about 100x any fair price, if a fair rate could even be derived from such a transaction in unrelated terms. And again, it's $500 just to get in the game.

    Then there's the "song frequency" rules which prohibit "heavy rotation" of songs, or even artists, much more strictly than on radio transmission. Or the absolute prohibition on "interactive" (requests) services. These rules are all designed to cripple the hobbyist or personal-scale webcaster, even nonprofits (like small/public colleges), and anyone producing "Internet radio" any different than the stale preprogrammed formats driving people away from radio in droves.

    Webcasters have rights. These rules take them away. That repression creates rebellion. In the meantime, it creates profits for the global masters like Viacom, ClearChannel, NewsCorp, Disney. Welcome to our mickey mouse New World Order.
    • "That broadcaster would, apparently, mean that webcasting a song or show would entitle a single webcaster to own it for a (long) lifetime - presumably when the time will be extended. That content includes even public domain content, stealing it from the public for a single webcaster."

      Though I'm completely against this treaty, I must correct you here. The treaty only forbids the reproduction of _that_ particular broadcasted "copy" of the work. It does not forbid you to reproduce the work if you got it from
      • Let's say a webcaster retransmits a song they recorded from a stream they received from another webcaster. Does the original webcaster have to prove that the retransmission was recorded from their stream? How do they do that? It seems to me that the copyright owner can ask for proof that the alleged retransmitter owns a copy (and hence the transmission rights, if they pay a legitimate royalty). And the original webcaster's police work only sends the alleged retransmitter to buy more copies of someone else's

  • I don't think it's constitutional (Score:3, Informative)

    by Stephen Samuel ( 106962 ) <samuel AT bcgreen DOT com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @08:57AM (#13657900) Homepage Journal
    The section of the constitution that gives the right to make Copyright and patent laws reads:
    To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
    (Article 1 Section 8 [emory.edu] clause 8)

    Broadcasters are not the authors of a public domain work that they broadcast. If this section doesn't apply, then the First Amendment reigns supreme.
    -- and if the author of a work doesn't mind it's retransmission, then there is no way that this section allows someone else to prevent the retransmission of his work, as that infringes the artist's right of free speech, and their exclusive right to their work.

    (IANAL)

  • This is all just another argument in favor of unregulated P2P. It's all about consumers taking back their Fair Use and Public Domain rights.

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