Debunking the Myth: Why Everyone Benefits from a WIPO Broadcasters’ Treaty

Abstract

Today more than ever, broadcasters are urged to provide convenient, portable and cross-border access to their signals, notably through online services, IP-TV and OTT (“over-the-top”) platforms. Obviously, broadcasters wish to offer their audiences more and easier access to their programmes by any means. However, they cannot be expected to invest in such access if sufficient protection of their signals is not guaranteed. At the international level, the legal protection under the 1961 Rome Convention is clearly outdated. With the increasing on-demand consumption of broadcasters’ programming, the current gaps are growing rapidly. By representing the most robust safeguard for cultural diversity and media pluralism, broadcasters provide more benefits to society than anyone else in the copyright sector. They are key in ensuring fundamental democratic values, such as freedom of expression, but are also vitally important in introducing local creative talent to the general public. Moreover, everyone loses out from broadcast piracy: creators, performers, sports right-holders – and citizens too. In light of the above, it is a blatant omission that none of the international rules on the protection of broadcasters take due account of the new platforms for signal distribution which include not only cable and satellite services, but also digital and online services, broadband networks, connected-TVs, USB sticks, smart phones and tablets. Pirated programmes are also used to drive equipment sales such as set-up boxes with in-built players and add-ons providing deep links to pirates' websites. These forms of signal piracy should be properly addressed; the WIPO debate for the update of broadcasters’ neighbouring right must now move to its decisive stage. The need for an update was recognized by broadcasters at an early stage and supported by an overwhelming majority of delegations at the first meeting of the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights of WIPO in 1998; since then, its necessity has never been in serious doubt. However, the drafting work at WIPO has been subject to unprecedented delays in the norm-setting process, while technical developments of the past decade have brought upon more changes to broadcast media and their consumption than in the 50 years following the 1961 Rome Convention. In 2020, with standardized 5G networks, many parts of the world will enter into another new technological era, with a potentially huge impact on the broadcast sector. Recently, both the United States and the European Union started their own work on modernizing the copyright frameworks to be fit for the digital era. It is therefore crucial that also the update of the broadcasters' neighbouring right is included in the multilateral framework.