(Available episodes so far here).
Discussions at the international level revived in 2000, when the WBU General Assembly in Melbourne adopted a resolution on copyright and access to information in alternate format. In particular, the General Assembly decided to call on the WIPO to “co-operate in the formulation of detailed national and international legislation which will afford full and equitable access by blind and partially sighted people to all copyright-protected material.” By the time the WBU, together with the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA, Section of Libraries of the Blind), renewed contacts with WIPO in 2000, the organization’s ambitious policy agenda for the benefit of the visually impaired was largely set. In the following years, WBU intensified its presence at the WIPO Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), which in the meanwhile had started working on the topic of exceptions and limitations. At the Twelfth Session of the SCCR (SCCR 12), Chile proposed the inclusion on the agenda of an item regarding “certain limitations and exceptions,” and two years later, at SCCR 15, Judith Sullivan presented the WIPO Study on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions for the Visually Impaired. Formally, the topic of exceptions and limitations was first included on the Committee’s agenda of its Sixteenth Session.
At SCCR 18 (May, 2009), Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, later joined by Mexico, presented a Proposal Relating to Limitations and Exceptions: Treaty Proposed by the World Blind Union (WBU). SCCR 20 saw the introduction and preliminary discussion of three more proposals, and at SCCR 22 (June, 2011) a large consensus eventually emerged among delegates on merging three of the negotiating texts together into a “Proposal on an International Instrument on Limitations and Exceptions for Persons with Print Disabilities”. The revised draft text of “an international instrument/treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities,” the basic proposal for the substantive provisions of the treaty further negotiated in Marrakesh, was finally adopted at the April 2013 special session of the SCCR.
Discussions at the international level revived in 2000, when the WBU General Assembly in Melbourne adopted a resolution on copyright and access to information in alternate format. In particular, the General Assembly decided to call on the WIPO to “co-operate in the formulation of detailed national and international legislation which will afford full and equitable access by blind and partially sighted people to all copyright-protected material.” By the time the WBU, together with the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA, Section of Libraries of the Blind), renewed contacts with WIPO in 2000, the organization’s ambitious policy agenda for the benefit of the visually impaired was largely set. In the following years, WBU intensified its presence at the WIPO Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), which in the meanwhile had started working on the topic of exceptions and limitations. At the Twelfth Session of the SCCR (SCCR 12), Chile proposed the inclusion on the agenda of an item regarding “certain limitations and exceptions,” and two years later, at SCCR 15, Judith Sullivan presented the WIPO Study on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions for the Visually Impaired. Formally, the topic of exceptions and limitations was first included on the Committee’s agenda of its Sixteenth Session.
At SCCR 18 (May, 2009), Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, later joined by Mexico, presented a Proposal Relating to Limitations and Exceptions: Treaty Proposed by the World Blind Union (WBU). SCCR 20 saw the introduction and preliminary discussion of three more proposals, and at SCCR 22 (June, 2011) a large consensus eventually emerged among delegates on merging three of the negotiating texts together into a “Proposal on an International Instrument on Limitations and Exceptions for Persons with Print Disabilities”. The revised draft text of “an international instrument/treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities,” the basic proposal for the substantive provisions of the treaty further negotiated in Marrakesh, was finally adopted at the April 2013 special session of the SCCR.
