[Infowarrior] - Congress Warned About Broadcast Treaty

[Richard Forno]

Congress Warned About Broadcast Treaty
>From Public Knowledge, June 8, 2006
By Art Brodsky
http://www.freepress.net/news/print.php?id=15928

While we¹re otherwise occupied here in the U.S., broadcasters, webcasters
and cablecasters are working hard overseas to extend their domain over
material that goes out over their networks. They want an intellectual
property right over programming they don¹t own ‹ even works in the public
domain.

Late yesterday, two letters went to Capitol Hill to alert Congress to what¹s
going on, and to ask for some hearings before the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) takes final action on the broadcast treaty.

You can read the letter from the non-profits, including PK, here.

A similar letter from an impressive group of companies is here.

Here¹s a key paragraph from the letter:

The harm to the millions of consumers represented by the undersigned
organizations would be particularly great ­ this additional layer of rights
could permit broadcasters to restrict access to content within the home and
could limit lawful uses of content over the Internet. Thus, this treaty
could reverse the explosion of diverse and increasingly sophisticated ³user
generated² content that has become part of the fabric of the Internet.

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