This morning at the WIPO SCCR 17, the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO) has passed out a statement on the promotion of accessible reading materials for the blind in a trusted environment. The European Commission has pushed this hard in their morning intervention.
Basically, IFRRO is seeking to stop consideration of the WBU proposal for a treaty. They want to WIPO to “launch a platform of stakeholder consultations to develop a roadmap for ensuring access for the blind and visually impaired.”
The roadmap would include “a set of best practice guidelines and/or a sample agreement in order to facilitate the greater availability of accessible reading materials for the blind and visually impaired in a trusted and secure environment.”
This appears to be the form of the resistance of the treaty proposal. The collection societies and book publishers would be in a position to dictate the terms of the distribution of works in developing countries, to address remuneration issues, and to avoid dealing with harmonization of limitations and exceptions. At the same time, the Group B countries backing this will claim they are helping blind and other reading disabled persons.
Today Jukka Liedes, the SCCR chair, will be drafting some tentative recommendations on how to proceed on the SCCR work program on L&E, for distribution tomorrow morning.