Protection of Broadcasting Organizations Against Signal Theft: An International and Comparative Law Perspective

Living in a globalization era, audience from different parts of the world demand coverage of international and local events and news. This is where the broadcasting organizations’ role comes in. For the distribution of content, the process includes obtaining licenses from content creators to present it in their platforms. However, some organizations use their signals to distribute content with no consideration of the copyright requirement, therefore infringing neighboring rights by their activities. While several international conventions aim to protect broadcasting organizations against signal piracy; which occurs when a broadcasting organization uses its signal to transmit the content of another broadcasting company without obtaining a license, the issue of signal theft still persists. Another lingering problem these organizations face nowadays, is the fear to impose high level of protection on content, which might result in limiting the benefits of the broadcasting contents. Given these dilemmas, this thesis aims, in a first step, to determine the scope of protection that should be granted to the broadcasting organization. In a second step, the thesis aims to explore the extent of effectiveness of the current level of cross-border protection, and the ways it can be improved by studying the rights of the broadcasting organizations, the international treaties related to intellectual property rights and the international cases to be reviewed. It is noticed that existing treaties need to be updated to adapt to the current technology. This study shows that the proposed World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) draft treaty would make a crucial contribution in this aspect. Finally, the present study demonstrates that both technical and legal protection measures that are presently used require further developments by broadcasting organizations, and a further cooperation with different states’ authorities and international organizations.