I’m in Geneva at WIPO for the 17th SCCR meeting. The first two days have presentations of four WIPO studies of copyright limitations and exceptions. Each study gets a half day. The first presentation was by Sam Ricketson.
WIPO Study on Limitations and Exceptions of Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Environment, (SCCR/9/7), April 5, 2003. prepared by Mr. Sam Ricketson, Professor of Law, University of Melbourne and Barrister, Victoria, Australia
The Ricketson presentation was very clear.
I asked Ricketson to discuss the relationship between the 3-step test, and articles 6, 40 and 44 of the TRIPS. I noted that the U.S. used Article 44 of the TRIPS for our government use (28 USC 1498) provisions, to allow non-voluntary uses of works under the eBay decision, and the US Library of Congress and the U.S. Senate had proposed this for expanding access to orphaned copyrighted works.
Ricketson said he would comment on this issue tomorrow.
This afternoon Nic Garnett presented a study on TPM/DRM and limitations and exceptions.
[Automated Rights Management Systems and Copyright Limitations and Exceptions, (SCCR/14/5), April 27, 2006. Prepared by Nic Garnett, Principal Consultant, Interight.com, for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).]
At one point, Garnett seemed to be endorsing some type of standards for TPM/DRM to address public policy objectives.
Unfortunately Garnett seemed to say that Bookshare.Org operated under voluntary licenses. When I queried the Bookshare CEO on Nic Garnett’s comments, Jim Fruchterman said:
Of course, at the moment, almost everything we do is with the U.S. domestic copyright exemption or public domain. About 2,000 out of our 41,000+ titles have some kind of publisher permission, compared to 4,000 public domain and 35,000 copyright exemption.
Anything we do with international and copyrighted works is through voluntary agreements, because our copyright exemption stops at the water’s edge.
I was able to share this data during the question and answer period.
[img_assist|nid=207|title=WIPO SCCR, day, Thiru from KEI and other NGOs|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]