Broadcast treaty dying?
According to Ars Technica:
Delegates from around the world have been meeting this week at WIPO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland for their second (and supposedly last) round of consultations on the treaty since last year's General Assembly meeting. The plan was to hold two sessions in order to iron out differences between countries and then proceed to a Diplomatic Conference late in 2007 if consensus could be reached. But consensus was nowhere in sight, and negotiations now appear to be at an end. There will be no treaty.The Broadcast Treaty was an attempt to give global broadcasters the tools they needed to stop the theft of their signals, but initial versions of the treaty (which has been under discussion for a decade) adopted a controversial "rights-based" approach. Under a rights-based treaty, broadcasters would receive new intellectual property rights over their signals, and consumer advocates worried that this could put an end to some things currently allowed under "fair use." Even the US Senate had reservations about the plan.
And sighs of relief are heard throughout CopyFight Land ...