Saturday, May 14, 2011

Bi-lateral, trilateral and multi-lateral agencies on communication & media exchange

There are other organizations whose activities have a bearing on communication developments across the globe. A few of them are given below:

• Council of Europe
• European Economic Community (EEC)
• The Organization of American States (OAS)
• The Organization of African Units (AOU)
• The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
• The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)

A few operational agencies and professional organizations, such as:

• The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT)
• The Arab Telecommunications Union (ATU)
• The Pan African Telecommunications Union (PATU)
• European Broadcasting Union (EBU): Encourage professionalism in broadcasting in the region.
• Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU): Encourage professionalism in broadcasting in the region

International Practice on Media Exchange and Regulation

Numerous international bodies/phenomena govern aspects of media exchange and regulation at the global level. A few of them have been discussed below:


1. International Telecommunication Union
2. INTELSAT
3. World Trade Organisation
4. World Intellectual Property Organisation
5. The Internet


International Telecommunication Union
:

The international telecommunication Union (ITU) was formed in 1932, growing out of the International Telegraph Union, which was itself formed in 1865. In 1947 the ITU became a specialized agency of the United Nations, with its headquarters in Geneva. Its membership is made up exclusively of nation-states and includes most of the members of the United Nations, but non-state entities such as private telecommunication companies can become members of the individual sectors.


In various forms it has played a dominant role in international cooperation and standard setting throughout the history of telecommunications.

Regulations:

It now functions as the ultimate manager of the world’s telecommunication resources in:

• Allocating radio frequencies to avoid interference
• Coordinating efforts to eliminate interference
• Fostering the creation of telecommunication in newly independent or developing countries
• Promoting safety measures
• Undertaking studies in the area of telecommunications
• Allotting Communication satellite orbital positions to its member states


INTELSAT:

International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation (INTELSAT) was established by the United States and various European countries in 1964 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. Initially, like the ITU, INTELSAT was primarily an organization directed by its member nation-states, although state-designated telecommunication entities also were part of a multilevel governance scheme. Operated much as a commercial cooperative, with 143 current member countries, INTELSAT was and is a wholesaler of satellite communications and links the world’s telecommunications networks together. It has 213 investing entities and owns and operates a global satellite system that delivers:

• Public switched networks
• Private and business networks
• Internet services
• Video services

to more than 200 countries.


World Trade Organisation:

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is a Geneva-based international organization of more than 130 nation-states dealing with the global rules of trade between nations. It presently has an impact on:

• Telecommunications policy and intellectual property rights and may have greater impact in the future as telecommunications, satellite technology, and computer technology converge

In February 1997, 69 WTO member governments, including the United States and its major trading partners, agreed to wide-ranging liberalization measures in the area of telecommunications services. These members have agreed:

• Not to engage in anticompetitive behaviour
• To open their telecommunication systems up to foreign investment and control.
• Members have made commitments toward increasing international competition in voice telephony, data transmission, facsimile services, fixed and mobile satellite services, paging, and personal communication services
• Also administrates intellectual property provisions covering patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

World Intellectual Property Organisation:


The World Intellectdual Property Organisation (WIPO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations system of organizations. WIPO is responsible for the:

• Promotion of the protection of intellectual property throughout the world through cooperation among nation-states
• Administration of various multilateral treaties dealing with the legal and administrative aspects of intellectual property

The intellectual property concerns of the WIPO fall into two categories:

1. Industrial property, chiefly in inventions, trademarks, industrial designs, and appellations of origin

2. Copyright, chiefly in literacy, musical, artistic, photographic, and audiovisual works

In Copyright, WIPO recognizes the Bern Convention which guarantees protection in foreign countries. A member country must already have copyright protection within its own legal system that provides protection without a requirement for copyright registration and without a requirement for a notice of copyright to appear on the work. The Bern Convention exclusively grants economic rights:

• The author has exclusive right to translate, reproduce, perform, or adapt protected works and may bring suit in any member country for actual damages and other remedies.

In 1996, WIPO recognizing the dangers of new global information system, passed two new treaties:

1. Copyright Treaty: Strengthens the Bern Convention by including protection for cyberspace commerce. The provisions included the protection for computer programs and mandated that nation-states develop legal remedies to preserve the integrity of “rights management information”.
2. The Performances and Phonograms Treaty: Deals with the protection for sound recordings in a digital environment.

The treaties specify the limits of liability for information service providers and the telephone companies that serve as carrier for the protected works.
The treaties also deal with the limits of the fair use exception to copyright violation for educational institutions and libraries.

The Internet and Global Communication Law:

The increasingly widespread use of internet, a borderless technology with no international boundaries, has called into question traditional approaches to communication law and regulation in different countries.

The United States of America is endorsing the principle of self-regulation for the internet. Grounded in a constitutional system that has produced broad principles of freedom of speech, the United States has proposed that the content of the Internet be subjected to the same minimal controls that are applied to traditional media such as newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and the Internet be allowed to respond to free market demands.

In the wake of Reno Vs. ACLU in 1997, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the Communication Decency Act—the Child Online Protection Act (COPA, 1999) passed by the U.S. Congress, the Administration has apparently even relaxed attempts to police pornography on the Internet, instead supporting software filters as a way to protect children from indecent Internet content.

Existing laws aimed at child pornography can be enforced against U.S. violators who use the Internet as a medium. However, half of the sexually explicit material available over the Internet originates outside of the country and is thus exempt from the laws of the United States.

Other nations are not so sanguine about a relatively uncontrolled and unrestricted Internet that passes through national boundaries and expose citizen to ideas and images that their cultures reject.

Germany compelled CompServe Inc., an Internet service provider, to completely block 200 discussion groups to German websites in reaction to pro-Nazi messages (Knoll, 1996).

France has prosecuted a a website owner for uploading a book bearing secrets about a former President.

Singapore punishes both Internet users and providers who download and upload politically and morally objectionable material and imposes proxy servers, or “censoring computers” that keep its people from accessing outside web pages that are currently banned by the government.

China , in an attempt to protect its people from Western influences, built an Intranet that blocks Chinese people from the Internet, substituting for it a Chinese version, and plans touseproxy servers like those employed in Singapore.

India has the Information Technology Act which says (section 78) that the network service providers shall not be liable for the information or data put up by a third party.

Despites the best attempts of various countries to regulate the Internet, no coutnry’s method has been globally effective as:

• No control over the content emanating from other nations.
• Senders of the encrypted messages are difficult to be detected.
• Screening and filtering softwares are imprecise and at the same time overwhelmed by the vast amount of information traveling across Internet and the time required classifying and filtering.
• Network providers have neither the jurisdiction in most countries nor the physical capacity to actively and adequately censor the entire internet.

Countries can to some extent seek out and punish violators of communication laws within their own national boundaries, but an agreement that is binding in all parts of the world is absent.

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