At the 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), which took place in March, we witnessed a major shift in the EU’s position on international lawmaking in the area of exceptions and limitations to copyright (L&Es). The discussions also brought to light the rationale of the demandeurs of a Broadcast Treaty, deepening the civil society’s concerns about the impact of a new copyright-like right on the public domain and public interest activities.

Exceptions and limitations: a departure from the EU’s stance on text-based negotiations

The last time the most important forum at the global level for copyright rulemaking engaged in text-based negotiations on L&Es was a decade ago, in the lead-up to the adoption in 2013 of the Marrakesh Treaty. After the treaty was adopted, many developed countries claimed that the international instrument for persons with print disabilities was meant to be an exception, and opposed the drafting of any other instrument on copyright exceptions, be it binding or non-binding (such as a joint recommendation or a model law).

This stance was repeated ad nauseam over the years, particularly by the EU. So much so that not even the COVID-19 pandemic, which demonstrated clearly how important it is for schools and cultural heritage institutions to be able to operate remotely and across borders, seemed to remove them from those crystallised positions. 

This status quo remained until the last SCCR, when developed countries finally showed a change of heart. While still opposing the drafting of a legally binding instrument, the EU stated that it was willing to discuss non-binding instruments:

In this context, as consistently expressed in the past, we would like to remind, however, that the EU and its member states cannot support work towards legally binding instruments at the international level or any preparations in this regard. However, we stand ready to continue to engage constructively under this Agenda Item to reflect further on the other possible non-binding instruments and ways how WIPO can best help to provide guidance to WIPO member states to address the problems faced by institutions and people with disabilities including through the introduction of meaningful exceptions and limitations in their respective national laws. (…)

However, as the week proceeded, it became apparent that France wanted to soften the EU statement delivered by the Commission. The only EU country to ask for the floor, France made the following intervention, repeating what had been the EU’s position until that point:

In this regard, France has reservations regarding the fact that the conversation on L&Es could touch upon normative instruments. The continuation of discussions in L&Es should be founded on the exchange of best practices at the national level (…).

Frustrated with these continued attempts to divert the conversation away from concrete language to address the problems and solutions faced by educators, researchers, and cultural heritage institutions, in our statement we threatened not to return to the Committee:

We come here, year after year, to defend the rights of teachers and researchers. We support your discussions. We bring evidence. We talk to you, the person that was here before you and the person that will come after you. It’s a massive effort. Yet, every year, we leave this room empty handed, with no binding instruments, no soft laws, nothing that could make a difference. Do know that we question if we should come back.

We further shared the story of Jonas, a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, who we interviewed for our publication “Nobody puts research in a cage”. We explained his struggles with accessing the data sources he uses in his research remotely and sharing his research results with colleagues for purposes of verification and validation of his research. And we read his words out loud, hoping they could make a difference in the discussions:

Perhaps they did. At the end of the last day of SCCR/43, the Committee finally agreed to approve the revised African Group proposal for a work program on L&Es, which includes drafting work towards “objectives and principles and options for implementation at national level”. The Chair was tasked with advancing information sharing and consensus building on L&Es between SCCR meetings and given the option to create working groups of member states supported by experts to produce outcomes for consideration by the Committee.

Broadcast Treaty: increasingly difficult to grasp!

The discussions on the protection of broadcasting organisations against unauthorised retransmission and related uses were centred around the Chair’s Second Revised Draft Text for the WIPO Broadcasting Organizations Treaty, which continues to raise substantial issues of concern. 

While there seems to be a common understanding that any potential treaty should be narrowly focused on signal piracy and not extend to post-fixation activities, there are still many important issues to be agreed upon, including fixation rights, a perpetual term of protection, and limitations and exceptions.

The revised draft text contains important changes to the L&Es provision. Yet, none of the exceptions are mandatory, not even those that are already mandatory for copyrighted works (such as quotation, news of the day, and providing access for the visually impaired). Furthermore, unlike the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the text does not even mandate the contracting parties to achieve a fair balance between the rights and interests of authors and rightsholders, and those of  users. 

Equally concerning is the idea to give contracting parties the option to protect signals by means of a fixation right. This would grant broadcasters a new lawyer of exclusive rights over the programme-carrying signal on top of the rights they already have on the signal content, effectively extending the scope of protection beyond the mere signal. This is particularly concerning when the signal content is already in the public domain, as it would allow broadcasters to re-appropriate public domain broadcasts. Broadcasters are sitting on huge collections of public domain content and are the only ones that have complete, high-quality copies of those materials. Prohibiting the fixation of signal would mean preventing access to, and re-use of, the public domain material itself. 

When questioned why public domain materials were not being excluded from this new layer of rights, the facilitators made it clear that this was intentional. They claimed that broadcasters needed to be incentivised to promote public domain works to the public. We found this reasoning nonsensical and asked why corporations would need copyright-like incentives to use materials that are free for anyone to use and for which they would not need to pay any copyright licence fees. However, none of the facilitators were able to provide a response.

The next SCCR will take place in Geneva on November 6-8. This time, the Committee will meet for three days instead of five, and attendees will be asked to forego making oral opening statements and general declarations, in order to allow the Committee to focus on substantive discussions. Certainly something to look forward to!

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We made the following statement regarding the protection of broadcasting organisations (Agenda Item 5):

COMMUNIA works to defend the public domain and in our opinion the proposed broadcast treaty is a threat to the public domain and usage rights.

The current version of the draft treaty allows countries to protect broadcasters with exclusive rights without sufficient balance or consideration for the societal needs related with access to knowledge and information.

Broadcast signals carry content that plays an essential informational, cultural and educational role in our society. It is therefore crucial to ensure that the rights-based model currently under discussion does not create an additional obstacle to education, research and the activities of cultural heritage institutions.

Let us give you an example. We recently interviewed EU researchers to better understand the needs and challenges faced by them. A Swedish researcher told us that they use broadcasts as sources of scientific research. They research public discourse and they analyse mainly radio broadcasts and daily newspapers. With the current legal framework they already face considerable copyright-related obstacles. In their words “We really get into copyright issues and there it has been very messy.”

So why make things harder for them? This treaty needs to get rid of fixation rights. It needs to mandate that the parties achieve a fair balance by means of exceptions, and it needs to have the same mandatory exceptions that we have in Berne and in the Marrakesh Treaty. And this is just a start. We count on you to make it right.

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This is the second time the Committee meets since the beginning of the pandemic. In November last year, we urged the Committee to take appropriate action to respond to the massive disruption to education, research and other public interest activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, no Delegations put forward any proposal, and we left the SCCR disappointed at WIPO’s inaction in the face of this global crisis. 

Today, most Delegations expressed their agreement to a proposal to hold a number of regional consultations “to further develop the understanding of the situation of the cultural and educational and research institutions at the local level, especially in light of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on them”. Furthermore, a proposal by the Asia-Pacific Group, to hold an informational session at the next SCCR on the impact of COVID-19 on all the beneficiaries of the copyright system, was also well received.

Global South countries insisted, nevertheless, that the next steps for the agenda items on limitations and exceptions to copyright should not be limited to those consultations and information sessions. Many Delegations recalled the 2012 mandate to work towards “an appropriate international legal instrument”, and urged the Committee to set a work plan to fulfill the mandate.

The following is the statement made on behalf of COMMUNIA on the agenda item on limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 7):

During the peak of the pandemic, 90 percent of all countries worldwide offered online learning. Yet, many of these remote uses made by your educational communities, made by your family, your friends, are not protected by law. By the vast majority of laws.

The lack of fundamental exceptions to copyright that are fit for our current digital lives is a problem across the world. Yet many here claim this is a local issue, for each member state alone to solve.

When a meeting (such as this one) takes place and the participants, joining from all over the world, cite others in their statements, they trigger the application of multiple laws. When universities in your countries invite students located in other countries to online programmes, and the teachers show copyrighted images in their live streamed classes, they also trigger the application of multiple laws. Yet many here claim that there is no cross-border dimension to these issues, and each member state alone can solve them.

We honestly do not know how your country or any other country is supposed to solve these issues alone, when the works shown and shared in one country are seen and heard across multiple countries at the same time. 

So we urge you, work together to find a supranational solution to these pressing needs that affect education, research, and access to information.

As a first measure, we ask you to pass a resolution now to assert the flexibilities that exist in the Treaties to conduct public interest activities online. Further, we ask you to develop a work programme for the Limitations and Exceptions agenda item to fix this issue and protect fundamental uses across borders.

Finally, while we welcome the proposal for consultations and informational sessions, we ask that this time our constituencies are properly involved and represented.

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The first day of the event was dedicated to discuss the protection of broadcasting organizations, and several delegations shared their dissatisfaction with the fact that informal discussions on the text of the draft broadcast treaty had taken place without ensuring the participation of a diversity of delegations. The SCCR Chair invited to these meetings only to the so-called “Friends of the Chair”, which include Argentina, Colombia, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, and the United States of America. Civil society observers joined Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, South Africa and Chile in their ask for greater transparency and inclusivity.

The following is the statement made on behalf of COMMUNIA on this agenda item (Agenda Item 5):

I’m speaking on behalf of COMMUNIA, an international association that works to protect and defend the public domain. Communia includes among its members Creative Commons, Wikimedia and the Internet Archive.

First of all, we would like to support PIJIP’s call for greater transparency.

We understand that illegal streaming of broadcast signals is a serious issue, but the type of protection that is being discussed by this Committee poses serious obstacles to access to culture, knowledge and information.

We recall that broadcasters in most countries already enjoy solid legal protection against signal piracy and other unauthorized uses. Broadcasters may invoke protection under copyright laws, unfair competition laws and criminal laws.

We also recall that much of the content that broadcasters transmit is of cultural importance. In addition, radio and TV-based remote learning have re-emerged in the past year, in response to the pandemic.

A treaty that creates an additional layer of rights and ignores the societal and cultural needs related with access and reuse of broadcasts fails the society as whole.

No new rights should be mandated without the corresponding exceptions, and no perpetual rights should be given over public domain and freely licensed content.

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The following is the statement made on behalf of Communia on limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 7):

This Committee has been discussing the issue of copyright exceptions for almost 15 years. During this time, a number of studies were conducted and we learned that many countries fail to guarantee the right to use protected content for education, research and other legitimate purposes.

Still, reaching a common ground for exceptions was not a priority for all. Progress was limited even though we were seeing a clear trend towards cross-border uses, taking place online. 

Now, that state of affairs could be acceptable before the massive disruption to society caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But over the last six months those cross-border online uses have become the new normal. 

All over the world, institutions are opting for remote formats or hybrid models of in-person and online access and use of content. And we may never go back to the way things were, namely for education, where we now have teachers and students working from home, often located in different Member States, and having to deal with a fragmented treatment of exceptions across those locations.

We understand that Northern countries prefer to negotiate bilaterally with developing countries. In our opinion, this perpetuates an unbalanced power relationship between the Global North and the Global South.

This forum can provide more transparency and legitimacy to these discussions. We thus urge you to not leave your mandate unfulfilled. 

In the Report on Regional Seminars and International Conference on Limitations and Exceptions, prepared by the Secretariat, we can find something for everyone’s taste. Now it’s up to this Committee to set priorities for its work. 

We urge the Committee to respond to the pandemic with a declaration or resolution to assert the flexibilities that exist; then work on model laws and on a binding solution for cross-border uses; and eventually discuss a minimum set of mandatory exceptions.

Thank you.

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The following is the statement made on behalf of Communia on the protection of broadcasting organizations (Agenda Item 5):

We understand that the draft of the Broadcasting Treaty gives broadcasters perpetual rights over public domain and freely licensed content, which is extremely problematic for users. 

Without this extra layer of rights, these works can be used without restriction, and this freedom should be maintained. 

In addition, we are concerned that the current proposal for exceptions only gives countries the option to extend already existing exceptions to broadcasting signals. Obviously, countries can choose not to exercise that option, and if they opt not to, the Treaty will be creating new obstacles to access to culture and information. 

Exceptions are essential to achieve a balance between the interests of the broadcasting organizations and the public interest. The vision that supra-national instruments should only mandate the introduction of new rights, without imposing adequate exceptions, is outdated and turns a blind eye to the fact that copyright can prevent the exercise of fundamental freedoms. 

It is about time for this Committee to align itself with the knowledge produced by its academics and by its courts, which have over and over again referred to the need for a balanced view of copyright.

The Treaty should include a broad provision like the one contained in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which makes it mandatory for each Party to provide an appropriate balance in its copyright system, including by means of exceptions for legitimate purposes. In addition, it should have a minimum set of mandatory exceptions, namely for the uses already required by other copyright treaties.

Thank you.

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The following is the statement made on behalf of COMMUNIA on the agenda item on the protection of broadcasting organizations (Agenda Item 7):

I’m speaking on behalf of COMMUNIA, an association that works to protect and defend the public domain and users’ rights.

We understand that the current proposal of the Broadcasting Treaty gives broadcasters perpetual rights over content that is not subject to copyright and content that is subject to non-exclusive free licenses, such as Creative Commons licenses. We find this extremely problematic for users.

In addition, the proposal for exceptions in the Chair’s text provides narrower exceptions to protect users than exist for copyrighted works. The draft text says countries “may” extend the same exceptions that exist for copyright, but, obviously, countries can choose not to do this.

This adds new international law restrictions on the adoption of limitations and exceptions for parties to the Rome Convention. This is also more restrictive than the Berne Convention, which has mandatory exceptions for news of the day and quotations, and permissive exceptions for educational and other uses.

The exceptions provisions in the Broadcasting Treaty are particularly important, and different from the issues covered in the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty and Beijing Treaty, because they could add a layer of rights clearance upon copyrighted content.

In order to avoid creating new obstacles to access to culture, knowledge and information, mandatory exceptions and limitations should be adopted. In addition, no rights should be placed on works that are in the public domain or that are openly licensed.

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The following is the opening statement made on behalf of COMMUNIA on limitations and exceptions (agenda items 5 and 6):

I’m speaking on behalf of COMMUNIA, an association that works to protect the public domain and the users’ rights.

We would like to start by thanking WIPO for advancing the work on the Action Plans and for convening the regional and international events. Although we would have appreciated if these events would have provided space for more practitioners to share their concerns, in order to ensure a better representation of all stakeholders, we are pleased to see that there was wide agreement as to the need to have exceptions to support public interest activities.

We understand that some Member States believe these exceptions shall be designed solely at a national level. At the events that took place this year there was not always a chance for the participants to engage in discussions of international solutions, and that might be misunderstood as a lack of will to work towards such solutions. However, we have heard today many countries saying they do want WIPO to act.

Let’s not forget that individual solutions cannot provide an adequate framework for uses that take place online and across borders. Without an international solution, educators, researchers and other practitioners will continue facing obstacles when working together in various countries at the same time, which is something they do on a daily basis.

Finally, we would like to highlight that we agree with the understanding that exceptions and licensing-solutions should coexist. We believe that a balanced copyright system is able to protect fundamental needs through exceptions, while still leaving plenty of space to rightholders to license uses that go beyond those needs. One does not, and should not, replace the other. Rightholders and civil society members seem to agree on that basic principle, despite their divergences. What we need now is to have Member States reassuring these groups that it is possible to protect both interests, without nullifying exceptions through licenses and without exempting uses that would have an unjustified market impact.

This being said, we urge this committee to continue discussions towards a binding international solution.

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The following is the general statement made today by Teresa Nobre on Limitations and Exceptions (Agenda Items 7 and 8):

I’m speaking on behalf of COMMUNIA, an international association that works to protect and strengthen the public domain and users’ rights.

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 and let rightsholders weaken or undermine what should be a public policy decision.

Private agreements are important in any market, but they should coexist with – and not replace – exceptions. Agreements are not appropriate to harmonize the legal framework for uses of copyrighted works, because the terms and conditions of licenses vary widely, and they are not available for every material in every country. There are countless copyrighted works in existence and the large majority of creators is not interested in licensing their works (only a small class of professional creators is offering their works for licensing). Thus, it is impossible to offer meaningful solutions to users through private agreements only.

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.

The ongoing reform in the European Union should be enough for this forum to understand that agreeing on minimum standards is possible, while still taking into account local specificities.

Thank you.

As we mentioned before, 2019 will be a busy year for user rights’ advocates at SCCR, and the right moment to push forward the discussions towards an international instrument on exceptions and limitation.

In addition to the two bi-annual meetings, the SCCR will host three regional seminars on limitations and exceptions in Asia-Pacific (registration is now open), Africa and Latin-America, and an international conference on exceptions and limitations (Geneva, 17-18 October).

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The following is the general statement made by Teresa Nobre on Limitations and Exceptions (Agenda Items 6 and 7):

I’m speaking on behalf of COMMUNIA, the International Association on the Digital Public Domain.

I would like to start by making yet another request to Member States from developed countries, in particular those from my region, to soften their position against the need to harmonise copyright exceptions for the benefit of public interests related to access to knowledge and education, and freedom of expression. These interests are protected by human rights and are of no less importance than the interests of right holders, which are already highly harmonised.

We recall again that the European Union will soon adopt mandatory exceptions for various uses, including for text and data mining, education and for preservation for libraries and cultural heritage institutions. These new exceptions are designed to work across borders, have strong protections against contractual overrides, and give enough flexibility for Member States, namely on the level of remuneration.

We insist: this regional effort shows that agreeing on minimum standards is possible, while still taking into account local specificities.

For these reasons, we have worked together with other NGOs on the draft of a civil society proposed treaty on copyright exceptions and limitations for education and research activities. TERA, our draft treaty, was based on previous work by this Committee and incorporates provisions of existing international agreements and of national laws. We hope this draft will be of use to this Committee and will be taken into consideration during the regionals’ work towards the creation of guidance and recommendations to build an international instrument.

Thank you.

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