WIPO Standing Committee Discusses Access to Copyright Works for the Disabled

WIPO Secretary General Francis Gurry called on the delegates, meeting through July 25, to continue their work in the spirit of the recent Beijing Conference that concluded the long-discussed WIPO Treaty on Audiovisual Performances. With the Beijing Treaty seen as proof of the functioning of the multilateral system after years of impasse, Gurry urged delegates to not fall behind on the other unresolved issues on the WIPO agenda.

"We have lost one year,” Gurry said in his opening address. The SCCR had been expected to make a recommendation with regard to a new WIPO treaty on limitations and exemptions about some works for the disabled and blind a year ago. It had also been foreseen, Gurry said, “that the committee would make a recommendation on other questions of limitations and exemptions,” including exemptions for library and archives and for educational and research institutions. Gurry said: “I would urge you that there is no further slippage."

Considerable differences between regions were illustrated in the opening addresses. The African Group, Asian Group and Latin American and Caribbean Group (Grulac) put limitations and exemptions clearly at the top of their agenda. The Central European and Baltic States put a broadcasting treaty for protection of broadcasters and cablecasters against signal theft on the top of theirs.

Gurry said with regard to the Broadcasting Treaty that he hoped for consensus on a single text to be passed on to the General Assembly. The General Assembly in October has the final word on which texts can go on to an international treaty conference next year. “It is well evidenced that African countries need access to educational materials and resources in order to ensure development of human resources as well as their overall cultural, social and economic development,” the Egyptian delegate said for the African Group. “The international copyright system should contribute towards achieving this African development priority, through agreeing on a minimum standard of international harmonization for exceptions and limitations."

Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil and Nigeria at the opening day all presented overlapping cluster topics for the discussion on the limitations and exemptions for the educational and research sector. They included access to withdrawn or out-of-print material, handling of technological protection measures blocking the use of copyrighted material for pedagogical aims, quotation rights, and reproduction of lectures, translation rights and more. Representatives of different library associations underlined that they worked hand in hand, and were the core resource for the educational sector.

"WIPO should support cross-border uses by libraries, particularly interlibrary loan arrangements between libraries in different countries,” Lori Driscoll from the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) said at the Monday SCCR session. That group is an alliance of the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries. Driscoll pointed to difficulties to negotiate effectively in a consolidated academic journal market. Trade publishers such as Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Penguin have refused to license e-books to public libraries in the U.S. Others, such as HarperCollins, placed restrictions on the use of e-books by public libraries, such as limits on the number of times the book can be “checked out” each year. “This refusal to license raises very serious public policy questions concerning equal access to information in our society,” Driscoll said in Geneva. The LCA, according to its members, is more agnostic to the nature of the final instrument.

A clear push for a binding treaty also comes from representatives of the World Blind Union and other associations for blind and visually impaired people. “We have been very patient,” said Chris Friend from the WBU last week when urging the European Parliament to support a treaty. Work begun in the mid-1980s on what the WBU and the European Blind Union say would “revert the book famine” of texts available in Braille. Last year, the European Union -- by presenting its own proposal for a voluntary model to promote better access to content for disabled people -- was one of the main drivers against a treaty. The International Publishers Association said now it could agree to a treaty if some further changes would be made to the text.

The WIPO SCCR had to take a much broader look at the issue of exemptions and limitations, said James Love from Knowledge Ecology International. That should check on the impact of provisions in existing treaties, like the Berne Convention and an appendix to the convention dealing with exemptions for developing countries, he said: It could also check the flexibilities in the agreement on the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. The SCCR had to understand why these provisions weren’t delivering, Love said. A hot topic is the so-called three-step test that defines conditions for limitations and exemptions, which, for example, the EU said couldn’t be bypassed, while others like Egypt question the relation of the test to all exemptions clauses.