The committee agreed to continue discussing following points:  exceptions and limitations to copyright, a treaty on protection of broadcasters’ signals, and the protection of audiovisual performances.

The first half of the week was dedicated to “informative sessions” on exceptions and limitations. The treatment of a nongovernmental proposal by the World Blind Union for a treaty on exceptions and limitations for the visually impaired was another hot topic of the week.

On the issue of broadcasting, which has dominated the agenda for 10 years, the committee had previously agreed to set aside talks on protection for webcasters while it tried to move to a diplomatic conference (high level negotiation) on a treaty to protect against piracy of signals of broadcasters and cablecasters (Broadcasting Treaty).

India opposed to webcasting and encouraged completion of broadcasting negotiations on signals prior to and during transmission only.

Mr. Jukka Liedes, Chairman of the SCCR, has shown willingness to continue the Broadcasting Treaty efforts. Mr. Liedes’ first draft conclusions said “Most of the delegations which referred to the informal paper prepared by the Chair did not want to reject any option concerning the way forward, while some preference to option A in the Chair’s paper was expressed.”, which was later changed to “The Committee took no decision regarding the options presented in the Chair’s paper.” (“Option A” relates to the idea of negotiating a Treaty based on the previous draft text.  Agreement could be reached by “majority,” rather than the usual consensus basis followed in WIPO committees).  Pakistan, on behalf of the Asian Group, noted that the chairman dropped points not approved by consensus and said this should be remembered if any proposals are attempted again to use “majority” instead of consensus related to broadcasting.

A number of delegations showed their interest towards the conclusion of the Treaty. The Committee affirmed that according to the decision of the General Assembly, the protection must be established on a signal-based approach, and the convening of a diplomatic conference could be considered only after agreement on objectives, specific scope and objective of protection has been achieved.

An information meeting will be held at the next SCCR to look at current conditions of the broadcasting environment.

The issue of whether to give performers greater international protection over their audiovisual performances was discussed but no decisions were made.

For more information on the WIPO SCCR Meeting, please click here.

Next steps:

- The next meeting of the SCCR Committee: May 25th-29th, 2009.