Martin Moscoso, the Chair, invited NGOs’ comments.
>> KEI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In listening to the conversation today and yesterday on this notion of signal versus the content, or container versus the content, it sounds appealing and people have been talking about this now for some years, the idea that you can separate the idea that there is a signal and there is content and things like that.
But does it actually work? I’m not sure after the conversation that we have had, particularly when you listen to some of the interventions from countries like Japan or EU or other countries that describe what they are really expecting to have in the treaty. I mean, if you have a container around the content, and you can’t explain when the container disappears or ceases to be relevant for the use of the content itself, then you have in fact designed a layer of protection that does compete with copyright and competes with user rights as well.
I think that you might have to consider other paradigms, once you figure out what you are trying to do here. You may have to ask, do you have to really begin to talk about, is there a, are you talking about something that has like a short term like a 24-hour life or something like that, that is sort of designed to address something? Or is this perpetual? Like to make the public understanding what it is you are proposing here.
Would I question the idea that the signal versus the content conversation is playing out very well in these negotiations. The EU has proposed that you include as the object of protection transmissions by broadcasting organizations, in such a way that members of the public may access from a time and place individually chosen by them, that is what Web Pages are all about. You go into the Web Page, pull up net 234REUBGS or Hulu or something like that and you watch a show when you want to watch it — Net Flix. But they say they want to about create some special right that applies to only broadcasters. How are the other people that do exactly that same thing going to respond to that. What is Yahoo! or companies like that going to do that have their own Web Pages or millions and thousands and millions of other people that run Web Pages that try and do things where they are not broadcasters but they are doing the things that broadcasters are doing at the time and place of the choosing.
Then under the EU proposal, you would create some kind of unlevel playing field because we love broadcasters so much, and because they are so politically powerful, we would hand that to them and nobody would question it. It would not then eventually be a demand to extend to everyone else but I don’t think that is sustainable. What you are going to do is create a right which it will be difficult to deny to other parties. Once you deny to Yahoo! you are talking about applying it to Facebook, Google, YouTube. You are creating a right to give YouTube the right to claim a Intellectual Property right, in materials that are user-generated, that are loaded up to their Web Page, around, it’s just crazy around the world.
I don’t see how you are going to stop from that solution, if you go down the road that the EU and Japan are proposing, and some other proposals here.
What the U.S. is saying, it’s not very comforting. The U.S. is saying, yeah, give the EU everything it’s asking for here as long as we can implement it in the United States differently. You go into the implementation phase, you got broadcasters which put politicians on television and determine who gets elected in every country, and then you expect, sort of do a minimalist installation. The broadcasters are going to be well lobbied for the most extreme versions of this. I don’t know. I just think this thing is really headed in a bad way. I hate to say it, because I thought coming into this meeting there was some sense that you could narrow this thing down, restrict the beneficiaries, restrict the objects of protection, create the kind of thin layer that dealt with legitimate piracy things of like what television stations, radios are concerned about. But that doesn’t seem to be the way things are headed.
Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thanks for your thoughts.
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