Monday November 14, 2016
With a full agenda and a complicated schedule, the first day of WIPO SCCR 33 started promptly in plenary and is now, after lunch, in informal. Main item is the broadcasting treaty being pushed as always by the EU (more on their broad demands in another blog) while the US is “quiet” gathering information to brief the incoming administration. Second big item will be limitations and exceptions but that will start later this week. While there are quite a few library & archives delegates, I saw only CIS and KEI for NGOs pushing back on the Broadcasting treaty. Here is the agenda and schedule:
WIPO SCCR 33 Day 1 Regarding the Agenda and Schedule for the week:
>> CHAIR: Good morning. Welcome to the Thirty Third session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. I’d like to say that I’m very pleased to see you all again. I see well-known faces, I see new faces among the Delegates, and we hope to have a very important and very productive session.
As proof of the importance of this diversity and multilateralism that we all have, I would like to say I have very high expectations for this session, are and this is only possible thanks to the hard work that has been done to date by each and every one of you with your positions, your contributions, your proposals, and your concerns, but this has been the support of our work up-to-date. We’ve all shown consideration and respect for each other, and this will guide our discussions towards real results on the items on the agenda.
So this is the spirit in which we start this session after several months’ break, and I hope that we’re starting the year in a very productive way.
I’d like to say that we are lucky enough to have the new Deputy Director General from the World Intellectual Property Organization, who specializes in copyright and creative industries, Ms. Silvi Bordar, who is up on the podium, and it is my pleasure to give her the floor to hear her views and give her a chance to make her very first statement, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. You have the floor.
[Sylvie Forbin, the new DDG addressed the Committee in French, this is a rough translation]:
>> DEPUTY DIRECTOR GENERAL: Thank you, Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, Delegates, it is a great honor for me and a great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Director General at the opening of the Thirty Third Session of the SCCR. I’ve already had an opportunity of meeting some of you, the General Assembly, for example, but I’m happy to see you all gathered together today, and it is with great enthusiasm that I start work in this committee.
It’s really throwing me in at the deep end in my new job at WIPO. I would like to assure you that you have the full support of the Secretariat in the work of this committee. We’ll do our best to respond to all your requests, whether substantive or simply logistical, as has always been the case in the past, in order to facilitate your discussions.
You can be sure that we’ll do everything possible to make sure that your work is a success.The two main items on our agenda, broadcasting and exceptions in limitations, I’m sure you know them much better than I do because you’ve been working hard on them for more than ten years.
On the first subject, the Broadcasting Treaty, which is on your agenda, which has been on your agenda for, I think, about 16 years. I think I noticed during the Assemblies that there is a wish shared by many Delegations, I think, to finally complete the work very soon in view of the fact that the technical studies are now ripe.
Some members have encouraged the SCCR to make increased efforts to convene a diplomatic conference by the next Assemblies and rapidly achieve the long-awaited International Treaty.
The Secretariat, I can assure you, is prepared to make available all its resources to enable us to achieve that objective.Turning to Exceptions and limitations, which is the second major item before the SCCR, we now have, thanks to the many studies that you have requested on all the aspects of this subject, a very precise panorama of all the different legislations and regimes in Member States You will have new presentations, as you know, during this session. Professor Daniel Seng will submit the final version, more than 1,000 pages in length, on the studies of exceptions and limitations for education and research institutions.
Professor Blake Reid will present the status report on the rights for persons with other disabilities. In the past there were two other studies, one on exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives, and the study on exceptions and limitations for museums. With the nine other studies carried out for the SCCR in previous years, this series of studies is, I’m sure the broadest comparative study of exceptions and limitations that presently exist in the world. This mine of information will be extremely valuable for the next stages of our work.
During my contacts over the last few weeks, I’ve been able to gauge the sensitivities and complexities of the subject — subjects, so I will set out what is at stake, access to education, to knowledge, to culture for all and everywhere. This is an objective shared by all.
How, therefore, can we build on this consensus and, thus, overcome the differing views on the modalities?
Before we even start our work, I would like to assure you that I’m completely committed to finding, together with you, the Member States, but also with all the professionals concerned and with the representatives of Civil Society, Innovative Solutions that are pragmatic and that will benefit all the stakeholders, whether public or private.
It is essential that we meet these challenges together. It means access for all.
And finally, there’s a growing demand for including emerging issues on the agenda, and this has given rise to two specific proposals that will be examined under the item “Other ” and that is a proposal from GRULAC, proposal for Copyright Related To The Digital Environment and a proposal from Senegal and Congo to include the Resale Right on the committee’s agenda.In view of that, we will have on Friday morning Professor Ricardson on resale right, and the same afternoon we’ll discuss the GRULAC proposal. The time for these two items is very limited and will not — although the Chairman can correct me — lead to exhaustive discussion at this session on these subject, and we wait for — subjects, and we wait for guidance from the committee on what should be the follow-up from these two proposals.
It remains for me to wish you all very successful work during these few days, and, once again, to say that I am committed to contributing as far as I can to the success of your work. Thank you.
>> CHAIR: Thank you very much for the Deputy Director General, Mrs. Sylvie Forbin, for her work, and as you can see, we hear enthusiasm from her, and she’s encouraging us to achieve concrete results in our work on the various items on the agenda, items that you know well, and she has renewed the commitment of WIPO to make available all necessary resources so that we can achieve these aims involved in the discussion of these important items on the agenda and also a commitment to continue with the work that — through the excellent WIPO Secretariat team has been evident over the past few sessions, and I thank her very much for that as well. And I would also like to thank Santiago Cevallies, the vice chair for being here. He has an important role to play in creating the regional groups, and now after having highlighted this diversity because it’s very nice to hear all these different languages up here on the podium, I’ll now turn to English. With your permission, I will leave Spanish for a couple of minutes.
Yes, I would like to add that this is a beautiful language, but I shall now leave it for a couple of minutes.
It is proposed the members will continue to work on all subjects on the draft agenda. Discussions will be based on all working documents considered by the Committee, the Thirty Two session held last May as well as documents and proposals submitted for this session.
As to the schedule of the work, it is proposed to divide a meeting time equally between the exceptions taking into account the procedures and matters to be handled at the beginning and end of the meeting, as was done in several previous sessions.
The Secretariat has distributed a schedule for the week to group coordinators, and I would ask the Secretariat to review that schedule for us, so please. Michele woods.
>> SECRETARIAT: Thank you very much, Chair, and before I begin with the schedule, I’d like to briefly introduce the Secretariat copyright law division who are here assisting so you can approach them if you have any questions or concerns. To my left here are two senior counselors, Valerie Guval, Geidy Lung. To my left is Carole Croella. We have three excellent colleagues, on the far end Mueki, and next to her, Rafeal. He has joined the division since the last meeting. You may have seen him, but he’s formally joined us, which we’re very happy about, and next to him, Paoli Lanteri. All of us would be happy to help you during this meeting.
In terms of the schedule, today after the opening matter and procedural matters, we will begin agenda item 5 on the Protection of broadcasting Organizations. We expect to continue with that item through Wednesday morning, November 16th, up to 1:00 p.m.
At 3:00 p.m., on Wednesday, November 16th, we will begin with agenda item 7, the exceptions and limitations for educational and research facilities and persons with other disabilities.At that time, we will have a presentation from Professor Daniel Seng, who will be here with us. That agenda item will continue for the rest of Wednesday afternoon and into Thursday morning, November 17th.
During the morning on November 17th, we expect to turn to agenda item 6, limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives. That agenda item would continue on November 17th, Thursday, into the afternoon, up until 5:00 p.m.
At 5:00 p.m., we will go back to Item — Agenda Item 7, persons with other disabilities, then visual impairment, in order to have a video conference presentation from Professor Blake Reid on the status of the study on that topic.
Then on Friday, November 18th, we will begin at 9:00 a.m. instead of 10:00 a.m., with Agenda Item 8, Other matters. We’ll have a presentation from professor Sam Rick etson on the retail right, and the presentation will go for one hour.
At 10:00 a.m., we’ll go back to limitations and exceptions, agenda item 6, and continue with limitations and exceptions at 1:00 a.m.
On Friday afternoon, at 3:00 p.m., we will begin with Agenda Item 8, Other Matters, the topic on copyright related to the digital environment, which is based on a paper submitted by GRULAC, and that agenda item will be handled for one hour.
After that, at 4:00 p.m., we will go to other, Other matters, which includes the Chair’s summary, and then that would be followed by Agenda Item 9, the closing of the session.
We apologize, this is moving around a bit, and of course, we will announce the schedule for each day as we go along through the meeting. Thank you,