A Battle Won Against Broadcast Rights

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the major defenders against the insidious nature of broadcast rights (see the post below). Apparently, against all odds, the EFF has scored a victory for fair use and freedom everywhere. Boing-Boing (another champion in this campaign) has the update. I'll quote their summation of the WIPO's ruling because I legally can now:

"This week saw a new meeting on the treaty with the Chairman of the committee ignoring his orders from the WIPO General Assembly (which instructed him to prepare a treaty that stopped people from stealing cable, but didn't create this para-copyright regime), pushing for a rapid movement to a "diplomatic conference," the final step on the way to a global treaty. It looked bad for our heroes.

But the representatives of the world's governments wouldn't be railroaded. After a week of hard debate, all motion to a diplomatic conference has been abandoned. Instead, this has been turned into just another regular agenda item for future meetings, as in "OK, onto that broadcast treaty: is everyone in favor of this yet? No? OK, next item."

This is a gigantic victory for our side. When we started going to the World Intellectual Property Organization, we had no idea how we would manage it. There is no constitution to appeal to there. They control the venue and call the shots. But we went in and blogged the negotiations (the first ever look inside the sausage factory of a UN treaty negotiation), bringing unparalleled transparency to the negotiations. We rallied dozens of other organizations to come to Geneva. We argued. We posted guards over our position papers when someone started to throw them in the bathrooms and hide them behind the plants (first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you -- then you win!). We slashdotted them. We wrote them letters. We went all over the world and talked to librarians, activists, and hackers. We proposed a better treaty that would limit copyright around the world and give rights to archivists, educators and disabled people to use and preserve creative works.

We kicked ass.

And we won. (For now.)"