Stop WIPO "Webcasting Right" Limitations Treaty Ra

[rookiee]

"If you are not PART of the media, you are DEAD. You do not exist!" - Malcolm McLaren

Cory Doctorow appeared on Episode 68 of This Week in Tech, the frontmost running podcast about technology, and announced that WIPO ("World Intellectual Property Organization"), an industry association which attempts to set global regulation on copyright and royalties, is currently attempting to ratify a new set of regulations which reduces the right of individual podcasters across the globe, and defines a rigid ceiling of what a "podcast" is supposed to be, limiting the future innovation of the masses in the name of a small percentage of large corporations' copyright of "webcasts".

The rights of Creative Commons copyright license holders will no longer have full control over the rights of their content if this happens.

This will strip away YOUR rights to do with YOUR content as YOU please if distributed through a third-party. It will no longer be a "lawyer-free zone".

Cory and EFF.org (http://www.eff.org/), (The Electronic Freedom Foundation) is calling upon all podcasters and organizations, affiliations, groups, and hosting providers to add your name to an online letter to WIPO (http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/broadcasting_treaty/podcasting.php) and stop these additional regulations from happening.

[Seuss]

While others should indeed be concerned you have nothing to worry about.

No one wants to redistribute your sick twisted content to anyone but the proper authories... hopefully your local LEO is watching you.

[CinemaslaveJoe]

Is this really true? It sounds like so much smoke and mirrors to me. Every few years some new rumour appears saying that there's going to be a massive government crackdown on something related to the web... a tax on email, for instance, and this isn't the first report I've heard that the days of podcasting in its present form are coming to an end. I'm not criticizing you for posting the story; I just want to know if it's another instance of someone (not you, rookie) crying wolf.

-CSJ

[rookiee]

Well, the thing to really pay attention to (and worry about) is how incremental those in power push forward little bits of legislation. Like evolution, it's hardly a matter of sudden mutations in law being forced upon the people but rather tiny, miniscule changes.

This really is far from a new issue. Laws being made in favor of corporate industries have always been an issue even since the founding of the U.S. itself, which is why the founders had put such simple, specific rights for the people to always carry with them. The problem is, with each generation, it's a matter of the peoples' determination to carry on those founding principles.

For instance, freedom of speech is not freedom of the press. While the two are rather synonymous, they are truly two specific concepts. Freedom of speech is being allowed to speak freely in an open forum without fear of government control or retribution for said free speech. Freedom of the Press is to allow the ACCESS to the mediums in which free speech can occur. Podcasting (and webcasting in general) is both a freedom of speech and a freedom of the press issue.

A good analogy of this incremental change is Disneyland. I'm a huge Disneyland nut and always used to love going to the park almost weekly as an annual p*****lder. I would talk to some of the employees who had been there for years and they would tell me about how much it's changed over the last 30+ years since Disney's death. The quality of the park, the way they would treat the cast members, benifits, pensions, guilds, etc. are all going downhill and have been in small, tiny increments for the last 20+ years since Eisner's been around. And with the advent of California Adventure, that park's low turnout ampliflied the Disney Corporation's lack of planning and QC. Rumor has it that they're actually thinking about scrapping the entire park and making a new one.

The key concept I'm trying to illustrate is that these changes didn't happen overnight. Unless there's some major catalyst to trigger political change like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, it always happens in small bits.

In the case of media conglomerates taking hold of free speech, it's simply a matter of lobbying ill-informed congress members and senators who simply don't understand the technology enough, claim that the current way of things is "ruining business", and they easily sway the law. Telecommunications, broadcasting services, and recording/movie industry execs have long been changing the rules, step by step, inch by inch. It's been happening, and the only thing that stops it is the people. The most notable of these changes in recent years was the passing of the DMCA which totally infringes on the rights of non-commercial producers of online content and broadcasting. Once the DMCA was put into place, they gained ground for creating all sorts of restrictions and the ability to push DRM technologies.

The link in my signature below (Net Neutrality) is a lecture by Lawrence Lessig of EFF talking about how in the past culture has been shaped by both technology and the control over that technology by private interests since the birth of the printing press. He goes over how copyright law has shaped the discourse of the people through radio, phone networks, recording and movie industry, and how whenever a new technology appears, once people find out a way to make money, it's taken out of the hands of the masses (such as podcasting) and once laws are passed, industry has legal means of suing individuals who simply can't handle these suits individually.

It's a simple fact of sociology and politics. Whoever has the bucks makes the rules. In the past their money has allowed them major advantages over the little person. When the net came about it totally threw that advantage into the wind. With podcasting and other forms of "webcasting", they suddenly are feeling the threat that they might not be in full control. Their market analysts have undoubtedly come to the conclusion that the geeks of the dot-com era (including myself) realized back in the 90's. This is something new, it's big, and it's going to turn the world of media on its head..... IF the lawmakers don't prevent us.

That's why it's important for us podcasters to take a stand and make the lawmakers aware of our currently unregulated rights which we will NOT allow to be squandered by big business. We need to act on this BEFORE the dumb laws are made, not after. We stand to lose a future of free, open ability to do as we choose with our own media if these changes are to continue to occur.

It's always going to look like people are crying wolf about the end of the world each time this happens, because they ARE small changes. The important thing is to look at the big picture and realize what culture WAS, what it IS, and what it's to BECOME. The relocking of technology by big business is a reoccuring event in our history as a nation. We can't let it happen yet again.

[docsnavely]

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thread starter's vehicle

[gregleck]

While others should indeed be concerned you have nothing to worry about.

No one wants to redistribute your sick twisted content to anyone but the proper authories... hopefully your local LEO is watching you.

I echo Seuss' comments. I'm surprised that any host would allow this sick garbage on their servers.