WIPO Talks May Portend Sweeping Broacast-Based Copyright 113
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the nasty 'Broadcast Treaty' is rearing its head again in the WIPO talks. This would give a new copyright to what is uncopyrighted or out of copyright material to anyone who broadcasts the material. It essentially re-ups the copyright — not to the original copyright holder, but to the broadcaster, without any contract to the original holder."
I am confused (Score:4, Interesting)
I was trying to think of a situation in which this makes sense but couldn't.
Scenario:
Download "With The Marines At Tarawa" from the Internet Archive.
Broadcast or stream over the internet. Gain broadcast rights so no-one else can do it.
How does this promote any art or science?
What am I missing?
Is that really what it says ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I drifted through the various referenced links and don't really see where they came to that conclusion. The links appear to be mostly self referential to other TechDirt articles. I did scan through what I took to be the relevant WIPO section but I didn't get what they got out of it, admittedly I didn't get much out of it at all.
I certainly agree with the point that this would be a Bad Thing(TM).
Re:I am confused (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that you gain copyight over the broadcast that you made, so no-one can take your broadcast and redistribute it. If they have an original source that they did not get from you, this does not prevent them from distributing that. In other words, you own the copyright on the re-encoding that you did, but not the underlying content. There isn't enough detail in the articles that I can find to clarify this, though.
Europe's own fault (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, Google acquired a copyright to the scans, not the work itself. Second, the fact that Google even acquired that is the fault of European copyright law. Europe could adopt laws under which 2D reproductions of 2D originals do not acquire a separate copyright.
As for the British library, it only has itself to blame for not letting other people scan its content. Don't try to turn the arrogance and possessiveness of the British library into Google's fault.