Big Content Goes Back To Sneaking Bad Rules In Through Treaties

Big Content Goes Back To Sneaking Bad Rules In Through Treaties
by MIKE [?]
Techdirt, publication date: 2 May 2006
"What happens is they play a geopolitical game of leapfrog. The industry gets its diplomats to claim that a treaty is needed to 'harmonize' international laws on things like copyright, because one country has less stringent laws than another. Of course, the treaty always focuses on bringing the less stringent rules up to the level of the nation with the more stringent rules. Then, the industry works on getting local laws made stronger again... and then claims that the international partners all have to boost the levels of protection again to 'harmonize' things. What happens is you get an escalating system where the laws keep getting more stringent as each side tries to 'catch up' with the other, while leapfrogging them each time they do.
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The latest treaty to watch out for is the Broadcasting Treaty from WIPO, designed to work out new copyright laws concerning broadcasted and webcasted content. This has been on the table for a while, and despite plenty of folks discussing the dangers of certain clauses, it looks like the latest draft has put back in all the bad stuff, and shunted aside many of the important concerns that have been raised by the majority of countries involved. "