Center for International Environmental Law Opening Remarks, SCCR, 18th Session
June 2009
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Center for International Environmental Law, or CIEL, would like to urge this Committee to move as quickly as possible towards the creation of a new, international instrument on Exceptions and Limitations – in particular to address beneficial access for the disabled, for libraries, and for educational purposes, including adult-education and mass-literacy campaigns.
Recognizing that there will need to be steps along the way to achieving this new international instrument, CIEL would urge this Committee to move as quickly as possible on improving cross-border access for the visually impaired, and, to that end, endorses, as an excellent first step, the Treaty proposed by the World Blind Union, and which is supported by the signatories to the Montevideo Declaration who include, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Jamaica, Peru, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay. We would urge swift action on the proposal as introduced by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. However, greater effort still needs to be made towards deploying technology as a means of increasing access to knowledge. To this end, open-source platforms and standards are highly encouraged for their potential to increase access and to accelerate innovation.
For example, the DAISY Consortium’s Standard for Digital Talking Books is an open-source standard that holds great potential for people who have reading disabilities. The first DAISY Standard was proprietary, originating in Sweden in 1994. Three years later, in 1997, the DAISY Consortium adopted open standards, resulting in considerably accelerated technological evolution and innovation. DAISY has already begun to offer a more flexible and pleasant reading experience for people who are blind or print disabled in a number of countries including Sweden, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Similar approaches need to be encouraged, especially to enable cross-border access for the blind.
Electronic book technology and software has been around for decades. Most computers and hand-held electronic book readers now have built-in features to translate visual text to audible speech. However, publishers and authors are choosing to disable the text-to-speech feature for their work. This deprives the visually impaired and society-at-large from the potential benefits of technologies; technology in which considerable investment has already been made.
Regarding the Secretariat’s draft survey on exceptions and limitations, there is a significant lack of follow-up inquiry. In particular, information about the application of the surveyed exceptions and limitations in domestic activity is critical. For example, information on how often compulsory licensing or other statutory exceptions and limitations are invoked or challenged is critical in making informed decisions based on empirical evidence. In addition, many answers do not fall into a clear yes/no category. Greater breadth and a means of elaborating on important national variations are necessary, in order to provide for meaningful results that could not be otherwise obtained.
In addition, discussion of a new international agreement on internet broadcasting, or webcasting, is premature. Empirical evidence must play a more significant role in this and the other WIPO Committees’ decision making. We invite this Committee to consider that, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the difference in the number of internet users in industrialized versus developing countries has grown from 11% in 1997, to 45% in 2007. In 2007, only 22% of the world’s population had internet access, versus over 62% of people in industrialized countries. Increasing internet access in the developing world, in other word’s bridging the digital divide, holds tremendous potential for increasing access to knowledge. Given these facts, and the continuing evolution of digital media technology, further discussion of webcasting is premature before first addressing the lack of internet access and content for the majority of the world’s population.
CIEL also notes that one country’s, the United States’, decision not to ratify the Rome Convention covering broadcasting rights in the 1960’s did not prevent that country from developing and maintaining the world’s largest TV broadcast and cablecast industry. There is serious concern over the creation of a new set of IPRs, for merely packaging and distributing content, which would hinder access to information. Noting this, and the fact that no consensus has been reached on broadcasting rights for ten-years – ten years in which technology has advanced by leaps and bounds – additional resources ought not to be spent on the issue of broadcasting rights. The job of this Committee should not be the protection of particular business models for incumbents but the creation of dynamic, competitive, and creative markets that focus on providing greater distribution of knowledge, as well as incentives to the creators of content, rather than the incumbent intermediaries.
Summary of the meting available here.