We need minimal standards of exceptions for education and research
“We believe that there is a minimum set of access and use rights that should be defined by public rules, since they are justified by public interests. If copyright laws do not grant to the education and research communities, the cultural heritage institutions, and the persons with disabilities the same level of protection that is granted to rightsholders, and defer to private agreements the regulation of all uses of copyrighted materials, they perpetuate an unbalanced power structure […]. In order to have a minimum set of rules that are applied uniformly by every Member State and have a cross-border effect we need an international law.”
This statement was given by Teresa Nobre – a representative of Communia, which is a permanent observer of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), taking place this week at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva.
Such international law is TERA (Treaty on Copyright Exceptions and Limitations on Education and Research Activities), that was drafted by 15 civil society organizations, amongst which also IPI, and endorsed on 25 September 2018 on the global congress “IP and the Public Interest” that took place at the American University Washington College of Law. This international instrument would ensure minimal standards of exceptions for educational and research purposes, while at the same time enabling countries flexibility in how to implement the obligations.
The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that maintains the Open Library, a digital library index, and is dedicated to preserving knowledge. As many of the works in the Internet Archive are under copyright, the Archive uses a system of controlled digital lending based on digital rights management to prevent unauthorized downloading or copying of copyrighted books. In March 2020, due to the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive established the National Emergency Library, eliminating the waiting lists used in the Open Library and expanding access to books for all readers. In June 2020, the Emergency National Library faced a lawsuit from four book publishers and was ultimately closed.
The 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (hereinafter SCCR) made substantial progress on the issues advocated by the A2K Coalition (Access to Knowledge Coalition), which IPI is a member of. This year’s session was the most productive on the issues of exceptions and limitations. James Love (Knowledge Ecology International), a long-time observer at WIPO, described the outcome and the impact of the public interest community as the strongest since the conclusion of the Marrakech Treaty, which brought global copyright exceptions for the benefit of the blind and visually impaired.
Today, March 17, 2023, a symposium on law in the information society is taking place in the golden lecture hall of the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič will present copyright aspects of artificial intelligence at the symposium.
The third day of the 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is intended for discussion on the topic of exceptions and limitations to copyright, especially in connection with the right to research.