Activities
Overview of the latest work from CLM.
CLM focuses its energies on areas where CLM has the greatest impact, and where threats to our ability to preserve a balance between user and owner rights are 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:
- Development Agenda at WIPO
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. [Please link to relevant documents] - Abandonment of the Broadcast Treaty at WIPO
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. [Please link to relevant documents] - Preservation of Traditional Knowledge at WIPO
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. [Please link to relevant documents] - 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.
Last update: 12 October 2009