A committee of the World Intellectual Property Organisation
agreed on Friday "to continue without delay" its work on
"facilitating the access of blind, visually-impaired and other
reading-disabled persons to copyright-protected works."
At the heart of this work is a treaty proposed by the charitable
organisation World Blind Union (WBU) and written with the help of
the UK's Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) .
RNIB campaign manager Dan Pescod attended the five-day meeting
in Geneva. Pescod told OUT-LAW today that the UK and the US were
among a group of countries that did not support the treaty and
preferred 'soft options', though they stopped short of formally
opposing it.
Around 95% of books are never published in any format other than
standard print, according to the WBU. But visually impaired people
need books in other formats, such as large print, Braille and
audio. People with other disabilities, such as cognitive
impairments, can also find themselves 'print disabled'.
"Imagine if you walked into a bookshop or library, and were told
that you were only allowed to choose from five percent of the books
on the shelf," said WBU president Dr William Rowland in a
speech last year. "What would such a limited choice do to your
education, to your leisure reading opportunities?"
The WBU, RNIB and others have prepared a draft treaty that would
relax copyright restrictions to allow the creation and supply of
accessible books without the need for prior permission from the
copyright owner. The treaty requires this generally to be done on a
non-profit basis.
In some countries, it is already legal to create accessible
books without permission. It was made legal in the UK by the
Copyright (Visually Impaired Persons) Act, passed in 2002. But that
law is limited in scope. The rights are limited to
visually-impaired persons – so while a person with dyslexia might
benefit from a large-print book, or an electronic book which can be
played using text-to-speech conversion software, the law does not
facilitate that person.
Also, the UK law, like equivalent laws in other countries, does
not allow the supply of a digital book to a customer overseas.
The WBU treaty, if signed and ratified in its present form,
would lift these restrictions. It seeks to protect all 'reading
disabled' persons and it allows the supply across borders of
accessible works, as a Braille hard copy or as an e-book. At
present, a tiny fraction of books that are available in accessible
formats can be supplied across borders because their export
requires the agreement of rights holders.
Pescod said publishers have until recently seen little money to
be made from converting books into accessible formats, meaning that
the work is normally done by voluntary organisations like RNIB.
"If we make an accessible version of a book in the UK and want
to send that to another English-speaking country where they don't
have the resources to make books accessible, we should be able to
do that," he said. "But the copyright law as it stands doesn't
allow the transfer of that accessible info. The exceptions in place
in national legislations stop at the border."
The preamble to the treaty notes that "90 percent of
visually-impaired persons live in countries of low or moderate
incomes." These countries tend to have the most limited ranges of
accessible works, hence the need for a right to supply across
borders.
Pescod said that voluntary organisations in Chile, Columbia,
Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay have only 8,517 books in alternative
formats between them. However, Argentina has 63,000 books and Spain
102,000. All these countries speak Spanish.
. Spain and Argentina will not share their libraries with their
Latin American colleagues, though, for fear of breaking copyright
laws, he said.
The proposed treaty would also allow for the circumvention of
digital rights management (DRM) where necessary to render a work
accessible. Some books are published in a digital format that is
not compatible with the assistive technologies used by disabled
people.
Lobbying for legislative change in the UK, the RNIB noted
recently that DRM schemes "can react to assistive technology as if
it were an illicit operation." It also said that "while e-book
readers may have the facility to reproduce synthetic speech, the
rights holder can apply a level of security which prevents this
from working."
The WBU treaty would allow a company to buy an e-book, hack the
DRM and redistribute a DRM-free version of the work, provided
copies are supplied exclusively for disabled customers.
Pescod said that main objective of RNIB and the WBU for the week
was to have the treaty formally proposed within the WIPO committee.
Their second objective was to have it accepted as a viable
proposal. "These were met," he said. "Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay
tabled the treaty as a proposal."
That put the treaty before WIPO's Standing Committee on
Copyright and Related Rights. It was strongly supported by
delegates representing South American, African and Asian countries.
"India and China were particularly supportive," said Pescod.
Wealthier countries, it seems, were less enthusiastic.
"Many publishers and rights holders and some states say we need
a 'soft' solution," said Pescod. "RNIB should work with rights
holders and others to resolve this, they say."
Pescod said these groups want a 'stakeholder platform' to
discuss the sharing of files, but not a treaty. "We're more than
happy to speak," he said. "But where we part company is that the
stakeholder platform is looking at one set of solutions only." It
would address some technical challenges, he said; but it would not
address other issues, including the production of unprofitable
Braille works, or the extra work needed to describe images.
"We're insisting that you need to work with rights holders – and
we'll continue to do that – but we still need a treaty which would
do three things: encourage national copyright exceptions for
disabled people in all countries; allow transfer of accessible
books in all countries; and allow tightening of rules on DRM
systems that can block accessibility."
"No country opposed the proposal [for a treaty] outright," said
Pescod. "Those who wanted to suggest that they weren't happy with
it used more coded language, like saying discussions were
'premature' or that they wanted to take it back home and discuss it
[at a national level]."
The published conclusions of the committee include the
unattributed objection "that deliberations regarding any instrument
would be premature."
"Those attacking this [treaty] fear it is going to undermine
copyright law," he said. "We disagree completely. Ensuring access
for a bunch of people who the market was not selling to in the
first place doesn't undermine copyright law."
"This whole idea that it's 'premature' is bizarre," he said. "A
WIPO and UNESCO working group looked at this in 1982. If that's
premature, at what point does it become mature and ready to
go?"
Pescod said that support for the stakeholder platform instead of
a treaty is coming only from those who are not disabled. "They're
not blind and they know better? I would question that," he
said.
The UK was represented in two capacities: as a member of the
European Union and as a member of the so-called 'Group B'
countries, a WIPO term that refers to 17 EU member states, the US,
Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the
Vatican. Neither the EU nor Group B representatives supported the
proposal. "Both are sceptical," said Pescod.
According to another meeting attendee, James Love of Knowledge
Ecology International, a group that promotes access to knowledge,
the opposition from the US and other high-income countries "is due
to intense lobbying from a large group of publishers that oppose a
'paradigm shift', where treaties would protect consumer interests,
rather than expand rights for copyright owners."
Ville Oksanen, a member of European digital rights group EDRi
said Group B and the EU "did their best to derail the process of
getting the treaty under serious consideration." He described the
given reasons as "rather perplexing" and described them as excuses
designed to avoid being seen as opposing help for disabled
people.
"It remains to be seen how sceptical they will be next time,"
said Pescod. "At the end of the day, though, we are happy with the
way things went."
On Friday night the WIPO copyright committee reached agreement
to discuss the treaty at its next meeting in November, in spite of
the objections. In the meantime, the committee's conclusions note
that "Member States will continue to consult on these issues at
national level and report on the activities and views on possible
solutions."
James Love is confident that the treaty will make progress.
"Group B came in the May [copyright committee] meeting to block
any agreement to discuss a treaty," he told OUT-LAW. "We'll be back
in November, discussing a treaty. The members of Group B will not
be able to consistently avoid dealing with the treaty proposal.
They will have to say yes or no in terms of moving this forward,
and to explain why."
"The core issue will be, what will it take to liberalize the
cross-border movement of accessible works created under copyright
limitations and exceptions?" said Love. "Given how harsh the access
reality is for people who are blind or have other reading
disabilities, Group B cannot long avoid addressing this topic.
There will be more and more data, and fewer and fewer chances to
claim strategic ignorance."
