Consumer groups hailed talks on copyright limitations and excepti...

234 groups in 113 countries, said Tues. L&E issues matter not only for education, libraries and the disabled, but for the whole economy. Developing nations face special problems because developed nations want more copyright enforcement, but also safeguards for knowledge. In trade, cross-border L&E affects transactions involving distance education, the archiving of works, fair use sharing on noncommercial lists, search engines and among the disabled. Technical protection measures (TPM) and digital rights management (DRM) “present enormous challenges,” CI said. They “can override the practical ability of persons to exercise traditional L&E and, when fully effective, essentially give the publishers the ability to determine a private system of copyright, and that has no requirement for balance found in public copyright regimes.” WIPO should be discussing this topic and “acknowledge that a global regime of obligations to implement TPM/DRM measures must be accompanied by oversight and regulation of the… systems, in order to ensure the public is protected from well known abuses.” CI urged SCCR to back: (1) More sharing of information on specific topics. (2) Empirical studies of L&E practices and their impacts. (3) Identification of areas where global harmonization on minimal L&E might be appropriate. (4) Consideration of new agreements to provide minimal L&E in specific areas. IPJustice also backed the proposal, from Chile, to update L&E. Since WIPO has been working hard to grant new rights to copyright owners for years, it’s “imperative” that L&E also be updated, the organization said. In particular, reverse engineering technology and space-shifting of media should be permitted, and consumers’ private copying rights should be protected against rights owners’s abuse. However, IPJustice warned, the discussion of L&E “must be viewed as setting a minimum standard, not a ceiling.”