I spoke on a panel at a luncheon held as part of a 3-day meeting of the Transatlantic Legislators Dialogue, chaired by US Rep. Jo Ann Davis (Virginia) and Jonathan Evans, a Member of the European Parliament (Wales) in the U.S. Capitol's Rayburn House Office Building. My remarks summarized the detailed recommendations we'd made to the summit, and emphasized our concerns about the failure of intellectual property laws to balance the needs of consumers with those of producers.

For instance, a dangerous and unnecessary Broadcast Treaty being promoted by the US and EU governments at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva could even give broadcasters control of webcasting, which means effective control of Internet content. That's a sweeping grant of power over free expression and democratic communication no individual government has granted, but is somehow being considered as a treaty. We are also concerned about restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Technology Protection Mechanism (TPMs) that raise the price, limit the choice of and limit the usability of consumer electronic equipment used to play DVDs and CDs and run roughshod over well-established principles of fair use. Finally, of course, we support greater access to medicine. We called upon the governments to evaluate a proposal for a new trade framework for medical R&D, as a substitute for bilateral agreements on drug prices or patents.