Banning the PC - No Not In Favor of Macs

This posting should make all of us stand up and take notice. It indicates (and is echoed in many other sites) that the World Intellectual Property Organization (an organization dedicated to protecting copyright worldwide) is considering a draft treaty (pdf) on broadcast rights which may inadvertantly attempt to outlaw the personal computer as we know it.

Here's the most amazing part, from Article 16, Alternative V:

2. In particular, effective legal remedies shall be provided against those who:

...

(iii) participate in the manufacture, importation, sale, or any other act that makes available a device or system capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal.

Every computer is "capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt" such a signal, so this provision, if adopted, would apparently require signatories to the treaty to ban the importation, sale, or distribution of computers.

This is on the tails of the DRM (digital rights management) debate where the entertainment industry is trying to mandate flags to prevent the recording and/or copying of any broadcast or print work. As a writer, I certainly understand the need to ensure that artists can gain profit from their work, but this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Here's hoping that the U.N. is smart enough not to present this for anyone's signature, and the U.S.A. is smart enough to neither accept the treaty nor ratify it in the Senate.