January 1st – December 31st, 2003

CLM was established to advise IFLA and its constituent groups with respect to copyright and intellectual property, economic barriers to the acquisition of library materials, trade agreements affecting library services, disputed claims of ownership of library materials, authenticity of electronic texts, subscriptions and license agreements and other legal matters of international significance to libraries and librarianship.

The membership of the Committee is to be representative of all regions of the world. During 2003 there were 24 members including the chairman, representing 18 countries. There are 18 members, one official observer and 5 expert resource persons (a list of members, observers and resource persons is attached). Two new members joined the Committee to complete the terms of the representative from the U.K and the representative from Australia. Marianne Scott chaired the Committee until the end of August.

The new Chair is Winston Tabb, Dean of University Libraries and Sheridan Director at Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218-2683, USA.
Tel. +1-410-5168328; Fax +1-410-5165080; email: wtabb@jhu.edu

March 2003 saw the end of CLM’s relationship with the British Library when the Secretariat for CLM was closed. Some web responsibilities are being looked after by Headquarters and the remaining secretariat work is being provide by the Chair.

The Committee held two formal business meetings during this period and worked electronically between business meetings using the CLM closed list and regular email. The web pages were revised this year and all the CLM documents, policy statements, reports of meetings and most of the papers given during IFLA Congresses are available there. In continuing to increase the number of languages in which documents are available Chinese translations were added for both the Position on Copyright and the Position on the WTO. The Committee is still actively seeking knowledgeable volunteers to translate into Spanish and Arabic.

During the meetings in Berlin, the Committee discussed programme topics for Buenos Aires; the recently published Australian report on Copyright and Contract and most importantly exchanged information about national developments.

CLM again had two successful programmes during the Berlin Conference The CLM Update session included the two topics of continuing interest to members, copyright and the WTO, as well as a presentation on hyperlinks – an interesting and complicated issue. The second programme was on technological protection measures and digital rights management, an area of growing concern to the library community.

During 2003 CLM continued to monitor and to provide input to meetings and documents relating to copyright at WIPO, the Ministerial meeting of the WTO in Doha, Qatar, The Hague Convention, the IFLA/IPA Steering Committee, the Open Access Manifesto as well as the recent Free Trade of the Americas Agreement. CLM also continued to work closely with EBLIDA, in particular representation to WIPO and the WTO.

IFLA joined forces with EBLIDA this past year for a meeting with officials in the WTO in order to ensure that the WTO Secretariat is aware of the issues of concern to libraries in both the GATS and TRIPS Agreements.

Since the end of the debates in 1996 on the WIPO Copyright Treaty, the IFLA presence at WIPO has not been as consistent as it should have been. CLM has been present at a number of meetings since 1996, where our position has been well presented. When CLM was not able to be present, efforts were made to liaise with our European colleagues through EBLIDA. Understandably this was not always satisfactory from IFLA’s point of view. The Committee has now managed to arrange a more effective and consistent approach to monitoring WIPO. As of June, with support from the Swiss library community, CLM will now have a "resident" librarian who will monitor the most relevant WIPO committees, work with members of CLM on policy issues, and attend the appropriate WIPO meetings in Geneva. In addition, the incoming chair will attend WIPO meetings as his schedule permits. Fortunately, both the chair and resident librarian were able to attend the semi-annual meeting of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights in Geneva in November.

Prepared by Marianne Scott and Winston Tabb