Three Days of Defending the Public Domain at WIPO
It was an amazing three days at the World Intellectual Property Organisation, with a strong push at the very end for transparent procedure at WIPO. The main outcomes were:
Chile successfully added an agenda item to the next meeting of the committee, to address the rights of users to access and use knowledge.
There was very little support for giving webcasters the broad new powers that the broadcasters are gunning for.
There was little agreement on including technological protection measures.
There was a good deal of dramatic debate over WIPO's procedures, their transparency, and how much they reflected a process driven by member states.
A more detailed account:
On Day 1, Nov. 17, Chile proposed that WIPO take us the issue of rights for users ("limitations and exceptions") as a permanent item on the agenda of the copyright committee. A number of countries intervened in support of the proposal. A handful of NGOs were able to speak, and the chair postponed the remainder of discussion until today. This afternoon, the chair announced right before lunch that he would make users' rights an item on the agenda of the next committee meeting. So for perhaps the first time, the committee will be focused on the question of how to maintain our ability to freely access and create knowledge. This was an amazing victory in line with the Development Agenda and a step forward for the Treaty for Access to Knowledge.
On Day 2, the chair moved swiftly through a number of previuos disagreements on the treaty, finding at nearly each stop that there was still a lack of consensus on everything from the length of broadcasters' new privileges to the use of technology locks. A clear consensus emerged that webcasters should not be the benficiarie of new and untested monopoly powers.
Also on Day 2 we discoverd that someon had trashed the documents of several civil society NGOs, including Union for the Public Domain, EFF and IP Justice, into the trash. These documents were placed on a table as information for delegates, as is customary at these meetings. This was obviously a shock, and extremely sad given that WIPO is supposed to promote access to knowledge. We issued a joint statement to the secretariat.
On Day 3 the morning started with a number of statements by NGOs on both sides of the issue. Our statement was delivered by Shyamkrishna Balganesh.
After the good news on limitations and exceptions, the chair moved on to one of the most controversial provisions of the treaty, on technology locks. The discussion was cut short by lunch, but right before the break Brazil suggested that meetings at a regional level would not be appropriate at this stage, and that there should be an intersessional meeting in Geneva of all countries before the next official meeting of the copyright committee. Regional meetings have been used in the past to whip countries into a consensus on approving a treaty.
After lunch India supported this proposal, and a long and dramatic discussion ensued. Iran, Brazil, Egypt, India, and Argentina supported Brazil's proposal to include language for an intersessional meeting, and India asserted procedural violations by the committee. Brazil and India argued that a truly member-driven process would not lead to the chair's proposed language for the committee report. The chair finally took a vote, which is highly unusual in this committee, which is supposed to operate by consensus. In the end the chair's language was adopted as his own, but not as the committee's own conclusions.
The ending of the meeting was quite dramatic and you can get very detailed notes of the entire proceedings here.
- David Tannenbaum's blog
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