Why We Cannot Relax
According to Cory Doctorow, the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization has abandoned plans to include webcasts and podcasts in a treaty that grants broadcasters the right to refuse re-use of things they’ve broadcast.
This treaty allows broadcasters the right to control public domain, fair use, parody, factual material, and Creative Commons-licensed items — anything broadcast over their networks — even if you have permission from the owner of the copyright to use the item!
In other words… let’s say you have a blog at Yahoo! 360. If Yahoo! has its way and this clause is included in a future treaty, Yahoo! will have control of what you write for fifty years… even though you are the copyright holder as the creator of that material.
Yahoo! and Microsoft, among others, have lobbied the United States to have the Internet included as one of the broadcast networks. After fourteen treaty negotiation sessions, this clause has be relegated to its own negotiations, which will occur at a later date.
Yes, it will be an issue again.
Please don’t let this slide under the radar. If you live in a country that’s part of the United Nations and you express yourself on the Internet, you must stand against such a heinous attempt to take control of your creativity.
Start here.
