In our capacity as accredited observers of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), we are attending the 46th session of the Committee, which is currently taking place in Geneva (April 7-11, 2025).
This morning, we made the following statement on Limitations and exceptions for libraries and archives/Limitations and exceptions for educational and research institutions and for persons with other disabilities (Agenda Item 5 and 6).
Dear Delegates,
COMMUNIA would like to welcome the Chair’s proposal to initiate consensus-building activities on limitations and exceptions between SCCR meetings, as well as the proposal by Group B to initiate Committee’s discussions based on the US document on objectives and principles for libraries and archives.
In our view, these proposals are complementary and not mutually exclusive, and both advance the interests of our public interest institutions.
This Committee should initiate substantive discussions on objectives and principles. This dialogue can start today. Delegations can start by offering their views on the US document, while taking into account other existing Committee documents such as the 2017 informal chair charts mentioned in paragraph 2 of the agreed work plan, as well as any future documents on objectives, principles and options that may be introduced by other Delegations.
The Chair should support these exchanges in between sessions. Initially the Chair could be tasked with systematizing the commonly agreed objectives and principles. As the Committee discussions proceed, the Chair could then engage in further consensus-building activities with the support of facilitators. Advancing information sharing and consensus building between SCCR meetings is in line with paragraph 4 of the agreed plan and not allowing it would mean to draw back from the plan, which would be unacceptable.
We recall that the position of our libraries, our schools, our archives is only worsening as the years pass without. They face serious challenges to fulfil their public service mission in the digital ecosystem, while rights holders are entrusted with excessive powers, often exploiting the digitisation of the knowledge market to the detriment of our institutions and their users.
Only you can fix this imbalance, and we trust that implementing the proposals on the table will move this Committee in the right direction.
Thank you.
