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Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters (CLM)

Report to Council 2007

Purpose

The Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM) was created by IFLA in 1997 to advise IFLA and its members not only on matters with respect to copyright and other areas of intellectual property, but also on economic and trade barriers to the acquisition and use of library resources, disputed claims of ownership of library materials, subscription and license agreements, and a wide range of other legal matters of international significance to libraries and librarianship. CLM works with and through national and regional library associations to ensure that IFLA’s core value of providing "universal and equitable access to information, ideas and works of the imagination" is sustained, and in particular focuses on IFLA’s professional priority of "balancing the intellectual property rights of authors with the needs of users."

Membership

The Committee comprises the chair and members from 19 countries, nominated by their national library associations. Many members’ terms expire at the end of the Durban WLIC. For the 2007-2009 term, CLM will comprise the chair and have members from 27 countries. In addition, CLM relies on a small group of expert resource persons who provide advice in various areas of interest to the community. CLM has also established liaison relationships with several organizations whose complementary missions make them important partners for IFLA: eIFL, EBLIDA, and the World Blind Union.

World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)

As CLM is entirely a volunteer-driven entity, with no on-going staff support, we have had to focus our energies on areas where we felt CLM could have the greatest impact, and where threats to our ability to preserve a balance between user and owner rights were most alarming. Consequently, we have increased our already intense involvement with WIPO in Geneva, where CLM representatives, often in conjunction with colleagues from eIFL and the (US) Library Copyright Alliance, participated actively in 16 meetings between September 2005 and July 2007. Through written and oral interventions [many of which are available on the CLM website], collaboration with NGOs having similar goals, and aggressive lobbying of representatives from Members States, we have achieved some notable successes for libraries:

  1. Development Agenda. At meetings of the Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda (PCDA) in February and June the delegates reached agreement on a series of proposals of immense importance to libraries - such as access to knowledge, exceptions and limitations for libraries and the importance of preserving the public domain. An especially important contribution from the library community was the paper jointly prepared by IFLA, eIFL and LCA on the public domain, which immediately became a reference point for many delegates. While the results to date surpass any expectations we had when the development agenda process began several years ago, we cannot relent or relax. The PCDA recommendations will be taken up by the General Assemblies in September, and CLM representatives will be present and working hard to ensure that they are adopted and formally become WIPO’s agenda for the future.
  2. Broadcast Treaty. During the past biennium the single most important issue taken up by WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) has been a proposed broadcast treaty. It is a challenge to describe exactly what the proposed treaty would have covered, as lack of transparency and agreement on this core issue led to impasses at every session. But IFLA’s opposition to the treaty was driven by the core principle that there should be no expansion of intellectual property protection unless those proposing it could demonstrate convincingly that it was in the public good. For a variety of reasons, the most important of which is inability to reach the kind of consensus on which progress in WIPO depends, the broadcast treaty has been abandoned, at least for now. Some fear that this may be a Pyrrhic victory, signaling a decline in WIPO’s overall strength that may inhibit progress on issues we care deeply about, such as the development agenda. Only time well tell.
  3. Traditional Knowledge. For several years WIPO has been investigating, through its Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC), what kinds of protection should be given to folklore and other "traditional cultural expressions." These issues are of great important to libraries in all parts of the world as they raise questions very different from those we face in handling published materials - e.g., who "owns" expressions created over time by a community, and should intellectual property protection be limited in duration or perpetual. While the CLM Chair was able to participate in the most recent of these sessions in July, IFLA volunteers have to been able to devote as much attention to this WIPO activity as we intend to in the future. To help acquaint IFLA members with these issues, CLM has planned a programme on Traditional Knowledge for the Durban conference.
  4. Relations with WIPO leaders. During the past two years representatives of CLM, eIFL and the LCA have had several productive meetings with high-level WIPO administrators not simply to acquaint them with our issues but to seek means for developing on-going engagement in substantive activities. We were pleased to be given the opportunity to comment on WIPO’s draft "model law," and are pleased that WIPO has appointed an attorney, Geidy Lung, to serve as a liaison with CLM. Most importantly, IFLA and eIFL have sought and been granted a high-level meeting in Geneva with the leaders of WIPO this fall at which we will discuss issues of importance to libraries and our users and develop a plan for regular briefings on such issues for WIPO staff and for participation in the regional workshops WIPO convenes in various parts of the world each year.

Access for print-disabled people

Shortly after the Oslo World Congress, the Chairs of CLM and IFLA’s Libraries for the Blind Section wrote to each of the IFLA national associations encouraging them to join IFLA and the World Blind Union (WBU) in persuading their governments to add to their national copyright laws provisions from WIPO’s model copyright law that would improve access to information for print-disabled people. Simultaneously CLM worked with the WBU to encourage WIPO to undertake a comprehensive study of limitations and exceptions for print-disabled people, which was published earlier this year and can be found at Study on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions for the Visually Impaired.

Advocacy

CLM members are very proud of our accomplishments since we last reported to Council, and the chair wishes to give a special thank you to CILIP, eIFL and the State and University Library in Denmark for supporting regular participation by their staff in WIPO meetings. But much remains to be done! In particular, all of IFLA’s national association members need to develop both expertise on intellectual property issues of greatest importance to libraries and the capacity to influence both their national legislators and their representatives to international fora such as IFLA. CLM has sought external funding that will enable us to offer several workshops to develop this expertise in various regions. Finally, as the chair has mentioned in previous reports, IFLA needs to develop its own capacity for supporting the Society Pillar. We are grateful to IFLA’s President, Secretary General and Governing Board for the progress made in the past year toward a plan that will secure on-going staff support for our advocacy efforts, and look forward to helping bring this plan to fruition in the next few months.

Respectfully submitted,

Winston Tabb
Chair, CLM