This week is my bi-annual pilgrimage to Geneva, Switzerland, where I'm representing EFF at the negotiations over the "Broadcast Treaty" which lets people who send out shows claim a 50 year owenership over them, even if the shows are publi domain, copylefted, or of a non-copyrightable nature (like a C-SPAN broadcast). It requires signatories to protect DRM with laws that make it illegal to tell someone how to do more with his television. And there's even a proposed element ("the webcasting provision") that would bring this to the Web. This stuff is way bad news.
But we're part of the largest coalition of "public interest" groups in WIPO history. We're getting major face-time with the delegates and making a difference.
Here are some posts I've just made to EFF's Deep Links blog detailing what's going on:
Day one notes: One of the things were doing here is taking exhaustive notes on who says what, when, and what it means. We're providing the first-ever in-depth peek into how the treaties that will rule your life are getting made. On Day One, we saw the introduction of a brilliant proposal by Chile to set a minimum group of public rights under copyright — like the right of the blind to turn books into Braille without permission or payment — that would apply in every country, so that people cooperating on international education/research, archiving and disabled access projects could know that the stuff they sent to their collaborators was just as legal abroad as at home.
Statement on limitations and exceptions: I'm giving this statement tomorrow on the limitations and exceptions proposal: "It is in the nature of archiving, education and the provision of services to the disabled to be cooperative. Unlike commercial, competitive enterprises where labor may be replicated — and charged for — many times over; nonprofit public interest work to distribute a joint effort as widely as possible."
Day two notes: Day two was all about the Broadcast Treaty, and saw really tough debate on the Webcasting provision and the DRM stuff (WIPO calls DRM "TPMs" — technological protection measures. Kinky!). Most notable, though, was that a saboteur took all of the literature set out by the public-interest groups and hid it/trashed it/threw it in the toilets.
Letter on stolen documents: Here's the letter we sent to the WIPO Secretariat (the administrative overseers) on our stolen literature.
