At a meeting in Geneva, the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights agreed to prepare a draft of the world’s first Webcasting treaty by April 1, 2004, ZDNet reported.
The treaty, which was proposed by the Bush administration and is backed by Yahoo, the Washington-based Digital Media Association and other US Webcasters seeks to extend to Webcasters the same level of international intellectual property protection that TV and radio broadcasters currently enjoy. However, the treaty has drawn criticism that it limits the use of works that are in the public domain. The Webcasting sections are part of a broader proposal titled “Protection of the Rights of Broadcasting Organizations.”
A second meeting is scheduled for June, followed by a world’ diplomatic conference during which nations that are members of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) could sign the final treaty