Friday, September 16, 2005

WIPO wants to give webcasters the right to steal from public domain, Creative Commons and GPL

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, a UN agency that makes copyright and related treaties, which lead to disasters like the DMCA) is once again considering adding "webcasting" to the upcoming Broadcast Treaty. This would allow a webcaster (anyone who sends you audiovisual material over the Internet) to have a 50 monopoly over what you do with the material you receive from him -- even if he's sending you Creative Commons-licensed work, GPL'ed Flash animations, or stuff that's in the public domain. It would also make it illegal to break any DRM used in connection with webcasting.
Last year, we took a letter from 20 webcasters opposing this to WIPO. They temporarily abandoned webcasting then, but now there are sneaky moves afoot to get it back on the table.

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