The marathon 23rd session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights continued at WIPO over the weekend. Discussion on Saturday concerned a proposed WIPO Draft Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations and, while libraries were represented, an opportunity to give a statement did not arise. The session of SCCR was adjourned on Saturday to give South Africa and Mexico time to prepare a new version of the broadcasting document on the table.

This document was briefly discussed in plenary on Monday morning. The rest of the day concentrated on two new documents, a ‘Working Document on an International Instrument on Limitations for Persons with Print Disabilities’ and a ‘Draft Compilation on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives’.

The Working Document for persons with print disabilities took account of all of the suggestions made in recent days to the Chair’s document (SCCR/22/16), and compiled them with attributions to Member States.

The Draft Compilation is an extensive document, which the library delegation warmly welcomed. Its 45 pages contain comments and proposals by Member States on each of the 10 clusters of limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives. It is extremely encouraging that Ecuador has now tabled additional language for each cluster that mirrors the proposals contained in IFLA’s TLIB 4.1 document. Consequently, IFLA believes the Draft Compilation is an extremely valuable document going forward, and thus, IFLA advocates for its adoption by the Committee as an official working document.

The SCCR will now spend Tuesday discussing the Broadcast Treaty. Following that there will be two days’ talks on preparation for a diplomatic conference on the protection of audiovisual performances. The next steps for the documents relating to both persons with print disabilities and libraries and archives will be discussed by Member States and communicated by Tuesday morning.