2 March 2006
Hello folks,
Please review the important joint statement below, related to the WIPO Broadcaster's Treaty, and consider adding your signature. Also make sure those you know who should sign are also given the opportunity.
Andy Oram has written a good letter to the US Delegation to WIPO on the subject:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/etel/2006/01/13/the-problem-with-webcasting.html?page=2
CPTech Links on the Treaty:
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/bt/index.html#Coments
Electronic Frontier Foundation Links:
http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/broadcasting_treaty/
IP Justice Links:
http://www.ipjustice.org/WIPO/broadcasters.shtml
Union for the Public Domain Links:
http://www.public-domain.org/?q=node/47
The Latest Draft of the Treaty:
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/sccr12.2rev2.doc
A survey of relevant links:
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/wipo_and_the_war_against_the_i.html
If you choose to sign, please send your name along with an affiliation or appropriate short phrase to attach to your name for identification purposes, to seth.p.johnson@gmail.com.
If your organization endorses the statement, please indicate that separately, so your organization will be listed under that header.
Thank you for consideration.
Seth Johnson
Corresponding Secretary
New Yorkers for Fair Use
Joint Statement to Congress:
Dear (Relevant Congressional Committees) (cc the WIPO Delegation):
Negotiations are currently underway at the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) to develop a treaty giving broadcasters power to suppress
currently lawful communications. The United States delegation is also advocating
similar rights for "webcasters" through which the authors of new works
communicate them to the public.
Some provisions of the proposed "Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations" would merely update and standardize existing legal norms, but several proposals would require Congress to enact sweeping new laws that give private parties control over information, communication, and even copyrighted works of others, whenever they have broadcast or "webcast" the work.
The novel policy areas addressed by this treaty go beyond ordinary treaty-making
that seeks worldwide adherence to U.S. policy. Instead, this initiative invades
Congress’ prerogative to develop and establish national policy.
Indeed, even as Congress is debating how best to protect network neutrality,
treaty
negotiators are debating how to eliminate it.
The threat to personal liberties presented by this treaty is too grave to
allow these new policy initiatives be handed over to an unelected delegation
to negotiate with foreign countries, leaving Congress with the sole option
whether to acquiesce. When dealing with policies that are related to
copyright and communications, Congress's assigned powers and responsibility
under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution become particularly
important. We urge two important steps. First, the new proposed
regulations should be published in the Federal Register, with an invitation
to the public to comment. Second, the appropriate House and Senate committees
should hold hearings to more fully explore the impact of these novel legal
restrictions on commerce, freedom of
speech, copyright holders, network neutrality, and communications policy.
Americans currently enjoy substantial freedoms with respect to broadcast and webcast communications. Under the proposed treaty, the existing options available to commercial enterprises and entrepreneurs as well as the general public to communicate news, information and entertainment would be limited by a new private gatekeeper who adds nothing of value to the content. Communications policies currently under discussion at the FCC would be impacted. Individuals and small businesses would be limited in their freedom of speech. Copyright owners would find their freedom to license their works limited by whether the work had been broadcast or webcast. The principle of network neutrality, already the subject of congressional hearings, would be all but destroyed.
As able as the staff of the United States Patent and Trademark Office and
the Library of Congress may be, it was never intended that they alone should
stake out the United States national policy to be promoted before an unelected
international body in entirely new areas abridging civil liberties. Congress
should be
the first to establish America’s national policies in this new area
so that our WIPO delegation will have sufficient guidance to achieve legitimate
objectives without impairing Constitutional principles such as freedom of
speech and assembly, without impairing the value of copyrights, and without
granting to
private parties arbitrary power to suppress existing freedoms or burden new
technologies.
We cannot afford for Congress to wait for the Senate to be presented with
a fully formed treaty calling for the enacting of domestic law at odds with
fundamental American liberties foreign to American and international legal
norms, and that would bring to a close many of the benefits of widespread
personal computing and the end-to-end connectivity brought by the
Internet. We ask Congress to use its authority now to shape these
important
communications policies impacting constitutionally based copyright laws and
First Amendment liberties.
Signed,
(Affiliations for individual signers are for identification only. Endorsing organizations are listed separately.)
William Abernathy, Independent Technical Editor
Scottie D. Arnett, President, Info-Ed, Inc.
Jonathan Askin, Pulver.com
John Bachir, Ibiblio.org
Tom Barger, DMusic.com
Fred Benenson, FreeCulture.org
Daniel Berninger, VON Coalition
Eric Blossom, GNU Radio
Joshua Breitbart, Media Tank
Dave Burstein, Editor, DSL Prime
Michael Calabrese, Vice President, New America
Foundation
Dave A. Chakrabarti, Community Technologist, CTCNet
Chicago
Steven Cherry, Senior Associate Editor, IEEE Spectrum
Steven Clift, Publicus.Net
Roland J. Cole, J.D., Ph.D., Executive Director, Software
Patent Institute
Gordon Cook, Editor, Publisher and Owner since 1992 of
the COOK Report on Internet Protocol
Walt Crawford, Editor/Publisher, Cites & Insights
Cynthia H. de Lorenzi, Washington Bureau for ISP
Advocacy
Cory Doctorow, Author, journalist, Fulbright Chair, EFF
Fellow
Marshall Eubanks, CEO, AmericaFree.tv
Harold Feld, Senior Vice President, Media Access Project
Miles R. Fidelman, President, The Center for Civic
Networking
Richard Forno (bio:
http://www.infowarrior.org/rick.html)
Laura N. Gasaway, Professor of Law, University of North
Carolina
Paul Gherman, University Librarian, Vanderbilt
University
Shubha Ghosh, Professor of Law, Southern Methodist
University
Paul Ginsparg, Cornell University
Fred R. Goldstein, Ionary Consulting
Robin Gross, IP Justice
Michael Gurstein, New Jersey Institute for Technology
Jon Hall, President, Linux International
Chuck Hamaker, Atkins Library, University of North Carolina
- Charlotte
Charles M. Hannum, consultant, founder of The NetBSD
Project
Dewayne Hendricks, CEO, Dandin Group
David R Hughes, CEO, Old Colorado City Communications,
1993 EFF Pioneer Award
Paul Hyland, Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility
David S. Isenberg, Ph.D., Founder & CEO, isen.com,
LLC
Seth Johnson, New Yorkers for Fair Use
Paul Jones, School of Information and Library Science,
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Peter D. Junger, Professor of Law Emeritus, Case Western
Reserve University
Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive
Jerry Kang, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Dennis S. Karjala, Jack E. Brown Professor of Law, Arizona
State University
Dan Krimm, Independent Musician
Michael J. Kurtz, Astronomer and Computer Scientist,
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Michael Maranda, President, Association For Community
Networking
Kevin Marks, mediAgora
Anthony McCann,
www.beyondthecommons.com
Sascha Meinrath, Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network,
Free Press
Edmund Mierzwinski, Consumer Program Director, U.S. Public
Interest Research Group
Lee N. Miller, Ph.D., Editor Emeritus, Ecological Society
of America
John Mitchell, InteractionLaw
Tom Moritz, Chief, Knowledge Managment, Getty Research
Institute
Andrew Odlyzko, University of Minnesota
Ken Olthoff, Advisory Board, EFF Austin
Andy Oram, Editor, O'Reilly Media
Bruce Perens (bio at
http://perens.com/Bio.html)
Ian Peter, Senior Partner, Ian Peter and Associates Pty
Ltd
Malla Pollack, Law Professor, American Justice School
of Law
Jeff Pulver, Pulver.com
Tom Raftery, PodLeaders.com
David P. Reed, contributor to original Internet Protocol
design
Jerome H. Reichman, Bunyan S. Womble Professor of Law
Lawrence Rosen, Rosenlaw & Einschlag; Stanford University
Lecturer in Law
Bruce Schneier, security technologist and CTO,
Counterpane
David J. Smith, Specialist of Distributed Content Distribution
and Protocols, Michigan State University
Michael E. Smith, LXNY
Richard Stallman, President, Free Software Foundation
Fred Stutzman, Ph.D. Student, UNC Chapel Hill
Peter Suber, Open Access Project Director, Public
Knowledge
Jay Sulzberger, New Yorkers for Fair Use
Aaron Swartz, infogami
Stephen H. Unger, Professor, Computer Science Department,
Columbia University
Eric F. Van de Velde, Ph.D., Director, Library Information
Technology, California Institute of Technology
Tom Vogt, independent computer security researcher
David Weinberger, Harvard Berkman Center
Frannie Wellings, Free Press
Adam Werbach, President, Ironweed Films
Stephen Wolff, igewolff.net
Brett Wynkoop, Wynn Data Ltd.
John Young, Cryptome.org
Endorsing Organizations:
Association For Community Networking (AFCN)
The Center for Civic Networking
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Contact Communications
The COOK Report on Internet Protocol
Cryptome.org
Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network
Dandin Group
FreeCulture.org
Free Press
Free Software Foundation
Illinois Community Technology Coalition
Internet Archive
Ionary Consulting
IP Justice
isen.com, LLC
mediAgora
New Yorkers for Fair Use
Old Colorado City Communications
Podleaders.com
Pulver.com
Rosenlaw & Einschlag
U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Washington Bureau for ISP Advocacy
Wyoming.com
--
[separate one-page attachment]
WHY PUBLIC SCRUTINY OF THE PROPOSED BROADCASTER TREATY IS NEEDED
If Congress were to hold public hearings, or if the US delegation to WIPO
were to publish the current proposal for public review and comment, myriad
voices from various segments of society could come forward to show that the
proposed Broadcaster's Treaty:
* Is written to look like existing copyright treaties, but it is not based on the constitutional requirements for copyright protection, such as originality, and in fact is antagonistic to copyrights
* Is promoted as a way of standardizing existing signal protection,
but in fact extends well beyond signal protection by giving broadcasters
and webcasters a monopoly, for 50 years, over the content created by others
the moment it is broadcast or transmitted over the Internet
* Gives broadcasters greater rights than producers of original
works
* Accords exclusive rights to non-authors in direct violation
of fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution
* Attacks the principle of network neutrality which serves as
the basis by which the Internet has fostered a profound expansion in
human capacities and innovation
* Grants privileges that extend beyond broadcast signals to
actually give broadcasters control over works conveyed within a broadcast
-- including copyrighted and public domain works
* Blocks fair use and other copyright provisions that enable
he public to make use of and benefit from published information
* Chills freedom of expression by extending unwarranted controls
over broadcast publication
* Benefits broadcasters at the expense of the web, the public
and future innovation
* Creates a de facto tax on copyrights, freedom of speech,
communications and technological progress, all for the benefit of broadcasters
and webcasters who have added nothing to deserve such a windfall.