WIPO SCCR-Broadcasting Treaty-EFJ statement

The international federation of journalists represents 450 000 journalists in the world. It is the world’s largest organisation of journalists and it promotes international actions to defend press freedom and social justice through strong, free and independent trade unions of journalists.

Part of our activities includes the defence of strong authors ‘rights protection for journalists whereby the latter should be recognised as author of the work that they create. We therefore engage WIPO delegations not to compromise the rights of journalists over the works incorporated in the broadcast and on which journalists enjoy exclusive rights under the WIPO treaties.

Regarding the scope of protection, we would like to stress again that protection should cover the broadcasting signal and be confined to traditional broadcasters only and not include webcasting. We therefore welcome the general support of WIPO delegations on this issue.

Rights to be granted should be limited to the ones laid in the rome convention in its article 13 to fight against signal piracy. We are still concerned that some of the rights conferred in the consolidated text are greater than the ones granted to authors in the Wipo treaties.

We agree with comments made by the Brazilian delegation regarding the wording of articles 6 to 9 which should be similar to the ones adopted in the Rome convention.

As for the eligibility for becoming party to the Treaty, the IFJ believes that membership to the broadcasting treaty should be subject to the WCT and WPPT treaties.

Regarding exceptions, journalists also rely on exceptions to exclusive rights regarding short extracts of broadcasting programme when covering events that are in the public interest. However, we believe that the inclusion of a whole list of exceptions in the treaty should be considered very carefully.

Lastly, we believe that the protection of audiovisual performances should remain on WIPO’s agenda and be treated as a priority. We believe that a vast majority of member states support the conclusion of a treaty on audiovisual performances and we are convinced that the adoption of such treaty will contribute to balance the different right holders’ interests.