FIM

Chaired by Peru, the SCCR at its 26^th ses­sion addressed the fol­low­ing issues:
 — draft treaty on the pro­tec­tion of broad­cast­ing orga­ni­za­tions against pira­cy of their signals
 — lim­i­ta­tions and excep­tions for libraries and archiv­ing services.

SCCR has been con­cerned with pro­tect­ing broad­cast­ing orga­ni­za­tions for over 15 years. In 2007, giv­en the lack of con­sen­sus over the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include web­cast­ing with­in the pro­tec­tive scope, the WIPO General Assembly had rede­fined the SCCR man­date, lim­it­ing it to “tra­di­tion­al” broad­cast­ing (i.e. exclud­ing web­cast­ing) and a signal-​based approach (so as to pre­vent trans­mit­ted con­tents gen­er­at­ing rights for broad­cast­ers, either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly). Despite this, options debat­ed still con­tin­ue today to include ref­er­ences to web­cast­ing and post-​fixation rights, which is inco­her­ent with the committee’s mandate.

The pro­pos­al pre­sent­ed this week by the United States which is rec­om­mend­ing pro­tec­tion lim­it­ed to the simul­ta­ne­ous retrans­mis­sion right, seems to fos­ter con­sen­sus both with­in mem­ber states and among NGOs rep­re­sent­ing civ­il soci­ety, with the excep­tion for the moment of broad­cast­ers them­selves who are still claim­ing an exhaus­tive cat­a­logue of exclu­sive rights (includ­ing post-​fixation rights).

With regard to lim­i­ta­tions and excep­tions which might be estab­lished to meet the spe­cif­ic demand of libraries and archiv­ing ser­vices, there is a wide con­sen­sus on the aim to facil­i­tate access to cul­ture and knowl­edge, but posi­tions dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly between advo­cates of a spe­cif­ic norm-​setting instru­ment and sup­port­ers of an approach based on exist­ing inter­na­tion­al treaties.

In a joint dec­la­ra­tion, FIM and FIA expressed their back­ing for the legit­i­mate aim of sim­pli­fy­ing access to knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion, while point­ing out that exist­ing standard-​setting instru­ments offered all the flex­i­bil­i­ty required to achieve this objective.