From those jolly mischief makers that inspired the DMCA, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) is firing up their troublemaking machine again.

The link for more information on WIPO plans is found HERE.
NOTE- If you are using the latest version of PeerGuardian, it may block you from accessing the WIPO linked pages, so you have to close PG.

Once you start poking around and looking at the various PDF files at www.wipo.int, you see that just about every developed country and every "intellectual property" concerned group (yes, including the RIAA and MPAA) is on board with this. WIPO is getting into webcasting, cablecasting , wireless, in short, every type of communication and broadcasting medium. When reading one of their documents (LINK), you realize that they spend a lot of energy and time on arguing exactly what the definitons of words should be.

And, to give you a flavor of the content, here is a snippet :
"54. The Delegation of the United States of America shared the concern expressed by the Delegation of India, particularly regarding the differentiation between signal and content when granting rights to broadcasters. Thus, its proposal granted rights at two levels:
(i) rights to authorize or prohibit; and
(ii) more limited rights to prevent or to prohibit.
Among the latter rights, it referred to the right to prohibit the making available to the public of unauthorized fixations, the reproduction of unauthorized fixations and the distribution to the public and importation of reproduction of unauthorized fixations. The idea of establishing rights “to prohibit” had been taken from Article 14.3 of the TRIPS Agreement. Unlike general exclusive rights, those rights could not be exploited or licensed. They only granted the ability to prevent certain activities."

From the above passage...
"RIGHTS TO PROHIBIT " ????

And, the next bit is a little long, but again, it lets you know the kind of thing that is being spouted :

" 62. The representative of the International Bureau of Societies Administering the Rights of Mechanical Recording and Reproduction (BIEM), speaking also on behalf of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), expressed the view that the scope of the new international instrument should be as narrow as possible and that to include cablecasters, and webcasters in particular, would set the boundaries too wide. It was proposed that the protection of webcasters against piracy of their signals should be taken up as a separate issue. It was clear that there were various concepts of webcasting, and it was difficult to define webcasting precisely. Examples had been given of webcasting that comprised thousands of musical works and films that could be “down-streamed,” involving significant investment by important commercial enterprises. However, the software for the streaming server was available to anyone who wished to establish a broadcasting service, at low or no cost. As a result, webcasting had the potential to become a mass application of a specific technology. In a certain territory or region, it was stated that that application could have been employed by large numbers of information providers. In the process of enforcing rights on the Internet, it was common to encounter individuals or organizations operating webcasting business models that made use of copyright protected materials without proper authorization, appearing and disappearing in short periods of time. However, some of the definitions that were being considered for the new international instrument sought to protect exactly those webcasters. A wider definition of webcasting increased the risk that operations of illegal “hit-and-run” information providers would be legitimized by that instrument. It was unclear, while webcasting was still in a development stage, how webcasting should be treated in an international instrument, and who should benefit from the protection."

Notice this new phraseology, "A wider definition of webcasting increased the risk that operations of illegal “hit-and-run” information providers would be legitimized by that instrument."

HIT AND RUN INFORMATION PROVIDERS ???

Many people who I communicate that have read more of the documents at www.wipo.int , call the actions of the WIPO very dangerous, i.e. a danger to individual privacy, and freedom. There is a clear, international effort to control who can provide content. Even the idea that someone would come up with a term such as "hit and run information provider" is getting pretty alien.

When countries as different as Senegal, India, Japan, and the USA, are coming together in a head nodding meeting on deciding what you and I should be able to watch, read, hear, etc., then I find this of concern.

Investigate the site (www.wipo.int) for yourself and project implementation of some of these proposals into the future. I can just hear them firing up their "RIGHTS TO PROHIBIT".

I hate to consider that someday, someone might say, "They lost their rights not in a battle, but with the signing of a treaty."
~Code