Stealing World Cup coverage

Hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world will be watching the Soccer World Cup kick-off on a pirate basis, and there’s not much that Fifa or the broadcasters can do about it.

Global copyright authorities are still debating ways to combat broadcast piracy.

The issue is whether to extend protection of property in the content itself, to the ownership of the electronic signal that carries the content.

The issue is ongoing at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo), and driven by vested interests who are specially affected by unauthorised re-streaming of live sports events.

This piracy cuts into the business models of the broadcasters who have paid for the rights, and it also cheapens the value of the rights for the key sporting associations.

An example of such piracy was in the 2008 Olympic Games, where 453 online infringement cases were reported. In the European football season prior to that, one source recorded 364 unauthorised web-streaming sites (mainly peer-to-peer based).

The complexity in countering this is twofold:

• The rights that individual broadcasters buy are usually only for immediate transmission. So once the match is over, the broadcasters themselves have no direct incentive to investigate piracy on behalf of the original copyright holder.


• For the sports organisations, the lucrative deals have already been done with the broadcasters, so there’s little motive to find the minnows who illicitly relayed the live programme.

It’s partly for these reasons that Wipo has been investigating protection of the transmitted signal as a way to make it easier to identify and prosecute pirates.



At present, global copyright laws protect content, not signals. Extending protection to signals would require an international treaty to this effect.

If this came about, signatory countries would pass new laws, and broadcasters would then watermark their signal. Thereafter pirates would be more easily pursued—for both content right theft, and for unauthorised use of the signal.

‘Rights creep’
But there is more than meets the eye, which explains why a treaty has not yet been agreed—despite being on the boil for more than five years:

• By protecting signals, there is a danger that broadcasters acquire power over the content that is embedded in their particular electronic stream. In the jargon, this is known as “rights creep”.

What it means is this: Consider a person capturing broadcast content on a video-recorder or computer, and wanting to use it for further purposes. That party would then need to get permission not only from the content rights holders, but also from the owner of the signal that carried it.

The extra burden involved would be a mega-pain for other broadcasters, artists, YouTube contributors, satirists, and educators.

There are also cases where copyright holders themselves have a direct interest in maximum dissemination—like a parliamentary TV feed, or like independent producers who want the widest exposure for their work.

It would be a sad thing if signal owners could inhibit re-uses of these types of content simply because the would-be re-users acquired the material through that particular signal. It means that broadcasters acquired extra rights over content simply by fiat of transmission.

• A second concern about signal protection is whether it would allow the same kinds of limits and exceptions as currently exist for content protection.

In the content area, people are authorised to use copyrighted materials without permission for what is often called “fair use” - e.g. excerpts for non-commercial educational or commentary purposes.

There is also a Wipo provision for developed countries to get around copyright laws—if they can show in advance that they’re translating or localising content and that this does not affect the owners’ business interests.

The concern is whether a signal protection treaty would allow similar exemptions for people to use material within a particular broadcaster’s signals.

• A third issue in Wipo is that the discussions to date have concerned broadcasting and cable-casting, but not webcasting.

The envisaged signal protection, if agreed, would apply to cases where broadcast signals are hijacked and transmitted via broadcast or computer networks. But even though technology is marching on, the documents at Wipo leave out the issue of whether signals that actually originate in the Internet should be protected—despite debate on the matter.

On the other hand, the envisaged signal protection doesn’t just apply to immediate re-transmissions of live signals by whatever means. It would also cover “fixation”—i.e. saving or recording the signal, as well as subsequent reproduction or redistribution.

That curb might cover putting up clips on a website for later download, or even replaying the embedded content to diners in a restaurant.

Overreacting
Ultimately, a signal-protection treaty is likely to be agreed, meaning that governments worldwide will have to police it. Big broadcasters and big sports groups will benefit, but whether the costs of enforcement are worth the social benefits is another story.

Meantime, in the absence of a treaty, Fifa is overreacting to piracy by banning all unaccredited signals emerging from the games. That includes SMSs by spectators or SMS alerts by newspapers as to what they’ve put up online.

What this Fifa overkill will not achieve, however, is stopping a geek from illicitly re-streaming a legitimate TV feed on the web. If and when Fifa, the broadcasters and Wipo catch up with the culprit, the pirated game will be long over.

This column is made possible by support from fesmedia Africa, the Media Project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Africa, www.fesmedia.org. The views expressed in it are those of the author.

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