On April 20, WIPO held a meeting to prepare a text for the final deliberations on the treaty on copyright exceptions for Visually Impaired People. IP Watch reports that many of the countries seemed worried that there were too many areas left undecided, or even sliding “backward,” as the Honduras delegation warned. Some worried that there will be too much left to decide when negotiations are set to conclude in Morocco in June.
Fred Schroeder, Vice President of the World Blind Union, said in a press release that “The purpose of this treaty is to ensure access to books for blind people and help end the ‘book famine’ we face. WBU is alarmed that some of the negotiators have focused their efforts almost exclusively on crafting language around copyright protections that have nothing to do with the ability of authorized entities to produce books for the blind and visually impaired.”
James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International, wrote that “the US government is taking a harder line in the WIPO negotiations for a treaty on copyright exceptions for the blind, and the reason is simple — lobbyists for the MPAA and publishers have been all over the White House, demanding a retreat from compromises made in February, and demanding that the Obama Administration push new global standards for technical protection measures, strip the treaty text of any reference to fair use and fair dealing, and impose new financial liabilities on libraries that serve blind people.”
The full text of the agreement as it stands heading into the June meeting is posted on KEI’s site here.
