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Leaders weirdly silent on sweeping broadcast treaty
If the programs are stolen — for example, the signals retransmitted by another party without permission, sold as an unauthorized DVD or performed publicly without the requisite license — the copyright owner may assert their rights, but in some countries the broadcasters are left with limited ability to protect their interests.
What started as an attempt to address this relatively narrow issue has since mushroomed into a massive treaty that would grant broadcasters in some countries many new rights. These include an exclusive right of retransmission for over-the-air television signals (retransmission involves capturing a broadcast signal and rebroadcasting it without permission of the copyright holder or the original broadcaster) and more than doubling the term of protection for broadcasts to 50 years from the current 20-year term. Moreover, exceptions and limitations to these rights, a hallmark of a balanced policy approach, would be optional for countries that adopt the treaty.