Ernest Miller of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School (one of my favorite bloggers and thinkers on the straining edge of IP law online) brought to my attention yesterday to the troubling draft of the WIPO Treaty for the Protection of Broadcast Organizations ("cuz heaven knows they're all face with extinction," he comments) that will get debated in June of this year. It is, in essence, a copyright-style land-grab for broadcasters and would give broadcasters rights of fixation, reproduction and distribution of a program for 50 years after its broadcast seperate from the copyrights of the material broadcast itself. The United States even wants it to apply to "webcasters". The push for this has been underway since August 2002 but it deserves more scrutiny from the broader community who might be impacted.