I've been in Geneva all week, fighting the Broadcast Treaty at the World Intellectual Property Organization. One of the least-supported provisions in the treaty is the "Webcaster's provision" which would allow people who transmit information on the Internet to control how anyone who receives it uses it -- even if it's Creative Commons licensed, or in the public domain, or not copyrightable. Microsoft and Yahoo's representatives have backed the US's call for this (America is the only country that wants this), essentially saying that they represent the whole tech industry on this.

This week we presented a letter from 20 technology companies and organizations that opposed the inclusion of Webcasting in the treaty -- among the signers were Mark Cuban (who founded Broadcast.com, and owns $500,000,000 in content), O'Reilly and Associates, and Salon.com. I made 300 copies of the letter and set out copies at one-hour intervals (setting out all my copies would have been a mistake, since someone was stealing all of the public-interest groups' papers and throwing them away in the bathroom garbage-cans).

It made a huge difference. After the letter got into the delegates' hands, the tenor of the debate really changed. Click the link to read the letter:

    Briefly, we reject the Webcasting Provision for the following reasons:

    1. The Internet depends on permission-free access. This is reflected in the exemptions in many countries' copyright laws for online and internet service providers. When authors or rights-holders' permission has been required for fixation, copying, retransmission or decoding in other situations, the negotiation of licenses from creators and copyright rights-holders have provided ample protection for all parties. Adding a new layer of intermediaries, over and above copyright holders, for the re-use of information on the Internet benefits no one -- save those intermediaries. If an Internet company has the rights to a work, or need not secure the rights to a work due to a limitation in copyright, or because the work is in the public domain, there is no rational reason to require that the company also seek the permission of a further intermediary whose sole creative contribution to the work is in making it available.

    2. There is no demonstrable problem. Internet businesses are famously, legendarily well-capitalized from angels, venture capitalists, public markets, private investors, governments and every other source of capital imaginable. Proponents of webcasting rights have offered no credible evidence that the lack of legal protection for webcasting rights has precluded the establishment of any new Internet businesses. Indeed, the businesses most volubly calling for Webcasting protection are among the best-capitalized in the history of the world. There is no certainty of benefit here, but it is certain that the creation of a new psuedo-copyright will slow down adoption and innovation in Internet markets by requiring all content-related businesses to negotiate yet another layer of license agreements before they can offer new products or services to the public. The most likely result of introducing these new rights will be to skew the market; in practice it will provide financial assistance to incumbents who will be able to assure investors of their right to exclude their competitors and new entrants from the market. At the same time, it is likely to constrain, not increase, the creation of more information products for the public.

    We do not desire the "protection" you offer us, nor do we believe it will benefit us.

Authored by Cory Doctorow and released under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 1.0
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Related links

Open Letter to WIPO, 2004