W·I·P·O
The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty (WIPO Copyright Treaty or WCT) is an international treaty on copyright law adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996. It provides additional protections for copyright deemed necessary due to advances in information technology since the formation of previous copyright treaties before it. It ensures that computer programs are protected as literary works (Article 4), and that the arrangement and selection of material in databases is protected (Article 5). It provides authors of works with control over their rental and distribution in Articles 6 to 8 which they may not have under the Berne Convention alone. It also prohibits circumvention of technological measures for the protection of works (Article 11) and unauthorized modification of rights management information contained in works (Article 12). As of December 2014, the treaty has been ratified by 93 states.
There have been a variety of criticisms of this treaty, including that it is too broad (for example in its prohibition of circumvention of technical protection measures, even where such circumvention is used in the pursuit of legal and fair use rights) and that it applies a 'one size fits all' standard to all signatory countries despite widely differing stages of economic development and knowledge industry.
Implementation
The WIPO Copyright Treaty is implemented in United States law by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). By Decision 2000/278/EC of 16 March 2000, the Council of the European Union approved the treaty on behalf of the European Community. European Union Directives which largely cover the subject matter of the treaty are: Directive on the legal protection of computer programs (Directive 91/250/EC) creating copyright protection for software, Directive on the legal protection of databases (Directive 96/9/EC) on copyright protection for databases and Directive on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (Directive 2001/29/EC) prohibiting devices for circumventing "technical protection measures" such as digital rights management.
The WIPO Copyright Treaty made no reference to copyright term extension beyond the existing terms of the Berne Convention, but some critics perceived a degree of association. This was because the United States Congress passed both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the same month. In addition, the European Union adopted the directive on harmonizing the term of copyright protection around the same time.
