The Broadcast Treaty has been on the agenda at WIPO for a long time. In the past few weeks it has become more of a live issue, with new proposals for language and new efforts to move it forward.

Last Friday, Public Knowledge wrapped up a busy week of Presidential transition team meetings. First, as part of the Open Internet Coalition, PK and a number of its industry and public interest allies met with FCC Agency Review team co-chairs Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach to discuss the Coalition's priorities and how we would like to see them implemented.

Today PK, along with the Center for Democracy and Technology, Knowledge Ecology International, the Public Patent Foundation and representatives of the library community met with some of the members of transition team for the US Patent and Trademark Office. PK Advisory Board member and Duke University Professor Arti Rai, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Executive Vice President for Global Legal Policy Shira Perlmutter and National Inventors Hall of Fame IP Counsel Joyce Ward were the team members who met with us.

Most of the discussion focused on the USPTO's role in International Copyright policymaking.

At least half of that title isn't a metaphor. I'm referring to the heated discussions that took place at WIPO SCCR 17 last Friday, as the member states tried to decide what the future work of the Committee might look like with regard to limitations and exceptions for the visually impaired.

What was so incredibly striking was the evident desire of certain member countries to foreclose the idea that WIPO might want to pass a treaty guaranteeing certain rights for the blind to access copyrighted works.

Some background: At the end of these meetings, a day or so is devoted to debating and deciding what the conclusions of the meeting have been. The Chair writes up a draft document, which is presented to the delegates.

The World Intellectual Property Organization's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights just finished meeting in its seventeenth session. On the agenda are three major areas of work: exceptions and limitations to copyright, the protection of audiovisual performances, and the protection of broadcasting organizations.

OK. Hopefully you all realized that S. 4108, the APRIL Act of 2008, was a joke. After all, there were a few excesses in there that would indicate how ludicrous the bill is.

Well, sort of. A lot of the provisions we included in the fake bill were modeled after real proposals made either by legislators, content industry lobbyists, or other policymakers. Some of the provisions were even taken verbatim from introduced legislation like the PRO IP Act and the IP Enforcement Act. We've posted a newly marked-up version that provides the sources of some of the provisions of the APRIL Act, showing that a lot of the silliness surrounding IP policy isn't limited to today.

The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights ended its 16th session today, agreeing upon a set of conclusions that have yet to be published by the WIPO Secretariat.

In sum, though, the broadcast treaty remains on the agenda for future WIPO meetings. Also, the delegations agreed to work on limitations and exceptions in the future, but not necessarily towards a treaty.

The last day of the 16th meeting of WIPO's copyright committee has just begun. As we listen to a presentation on WIPO's arbitration and mediation center, we've been handed a set of draft conclusions for the meeting.

There's still some discussion, including NGO comments on the broadcast treaty, to come, but here's the draft conclusions, which will be discussed towards the end of the day.

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blockquote> STANDING COMMITTEE ON COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS

Sixteenth Session, March 10 to 12, 2008-03-12

DRAFT CONCLUSIONS

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Protection of audiovisual performances

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The outcome of the deliberations in the course of the sixteenth session of the SCCR will be reported to the General Assembly.

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• The Delegations who took the floor expressed their willingness to take up further discussions on the substance, with the aim of finding a way forward. Some Delegations stressed the importance of finding a

The bulk of the time today was taken up discussing proposed work on limitations and exceptions. IP Watch has one good account of events; KEI has another.

Basically, Chile, alongside Brazil, Nicaragua, and Uruguay, proposed a work plan for work on limitations and exceptions to copyright and related rights. That proposal is available here.

It proposes that WIPO facilitate an exchange of information on different cuntries' limitations and exceptions, with the idea of finding common ground for an eventual treaty that will incorporate basic, minimum limitations and exceptions for users to use copyrighted works.

Things got underway in the public session a little after 4 pm here. After a great deal of private negotiation on the part of the regional groups, Jukka Liedes was again elected as chair of the SCCR. In a change, however, Luis Villaroel of Chile was elected as one of the vice-chairs, along with a representative from Morocco. Chile has often been at the forefront of discussions regarding limitations and exceptions at WIPO, introducing two documents in earlier sessions that proposed WIPO analyze limitations and exceptions and see if there was consensus to be found on them.