WIPO discussions on xCasting Treaty

James Love has another excellent essay on the WIPO broadcasting treaty discussions at On the Commons.

" The US government sends negotiators to Geneva, to cook up a new treaty, that would create legal protections that the Congress has never accepted, considered, or even discussed.

There is no way Yahoo (the main proponent of the webcasting treaty provisions) would ever get something like webcasting through the US Congress. How can we let a handful of WIPO negotiators create this new IP right in a major international treaty...

All week long the US government, together with the European Commission and some other countries, has opposed efforts by developing countries to exclude webcasting, or to include in the treaty language that would ensure that countries could control anticompetitive practices, protect access to knowledge, and provide greater lee-way in terms of excerptions for libraries, education, access for disabled persons, and other public interests."