Below are the draft conclusions, from the evening informal negotiations session on future work. The document say the version is current as of 10:45 PM, Geneva time.
This evening’s informal negotiations at the SCCR 24 on the disabilities issue are over, and delegates are coming out now, with a variety of different stories. Some new document will be tabled Wednesday morning. It will have some important differences, unlike a fairly clean text that was tabled a year ago as SCCR/22/15 REV.1, which was endorsed by Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, the European Union and its Member States, Mexico, Norway, Paraguay, the Russian Federation, the United States of America and Uruguay.
July 24, 2012 afternoon plenary: the broadcasting treaty text moved forward. All but India supported the Chair’s text as the basis of future works. In their own words:
EGYPT: Thank you, Chair. The African Group …
The African Group would support that the Chair’s nonpaper be adopted as the Committee’s working document, to guide our future deliberations on broadcasting. It’s our further recommendation that this Committee makes a clear recommendation to the General Assembly on our plan towards hosting a Diplomatic Conference on broadcasting in 2014.
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At WIPO SCCR 24, the negotiations on the text of an “instrument” on copyright exceptions for persons with disabilities appear to be going well. For the past year, the delegates have been close on the substantive issues, focusing on a handful of important nuances in the ways that beneficiaries of the agreement are defined, the types of works and rights covered, wording on safeguards, provisions for developing countries, and other technical issues such as the relationship to the Berne and TRIPS three step test. Continue Reading
India like many other delegations (except the EU Commission and the US) has been a strong advocate for the treaty to faciltate access and sharing of accessible formats. There is a lot at stake.
According to the WHO page on the incidence of visual impairments in India:
285 million people are visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 have low vision.
About 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in developing countries.
India has a particularly large population of blind persons:
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Like many readers, I am now an official fan of Zach Carter. Mr. Carter just wrote a timely and intelligent article regarding the SCCR24 and the treaty for the blind and visually impaired persons:”Obama Administration Blocks International Treaty To Benefit The Blind”
The Blind people want a treaty:
On Monday, 23 July 2012 the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has released the latest text on an instrument for copyright exceptions and limitations for disabilities entitled “Proposals for revised text for document SCCR/23/7”. This document is the result of both formal discussions in the plenary of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) held on Friday, 20 July 2012 and informal negotiations held on Saturday afternoon on 21 July 2012. Once this text is available electronically, KEI will publish the full text online. Continue Reading
The following interviews were recorded during the 24th meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). Most of the interviews are focused on the negotiations on a new WIPO treaty for persons who are blind or have other disabilities. The time of the videos varies from 16 seconds to more than 18 minutes. They are organized by the type of stakeholder, and the date of the interviews. This page will be updated during the meeting as I add more videos. Continue Reading
Once again a diverse group of NGOS spoke clearly against the treaty for broadcasting organizations. To quote CCIA “While the world’s governments can certainly create legal instruments with any language in them that they wish, surely granting copyright in objects that don’t exist would be difficult to justify to the wider public”. Well, the delegates are now back into informal sessions so the public in fact does not even know why they still work on more rights, (more road blocks) to solve signal piracy, already a crime I believe in most countries!
July 23, 2012. Broadcasting organizations (and MPA) views why they need a treaty
I am not sure if the best film analogy here would be Groundhog Day or The Bridge on the River Kwai but the following NGOs are re-affirming that they need a treaty because:
1. there is a piracy problem that can be fixed by giving them more exclusive rights for 20 years
2. the Internet treaties trilogy: there is a WCT and a WPPT so there has to be a WBT. To be fair.