US Didn't Sign The WIPO Treaty For The Blind

from the ah,-look-at-that dept

We were happy to see that the WIPO treaty for the visually impaired was finally completed and signed following the negotiations in Marrakech, where the MPAA did everything it could to try to kill or water down the agreement, with the US negotiating delegation acting as the MPAA's happy lap dogs. So, I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise to see that while 51 countries signed the agreement in Marrakech, the United States was not among them.

Now, you can argue that the US should have time to look over the agreement, or maybe run it through Congress first -- but, of course, when it comes to agreements that simply expand copyright, such as ACTA, the US stepped right up to sign right away, without having any open discussion or asking Congress to approve it. Furthermore, merely signing the document is different from ratifying it, so the US could have signed the document, and decided whether to fully ratify it later if it was really concerned. But, instead, the US simply decided not to sign at all, even as other countries decided to do so.

Filed Under: blind, marrakech, treaties, us, wipo treaty

Marrakech Treaty For The Blind Signed; MPAA Unable To Kill It

from the could-it-be? dept

It took decades to get this done, but it appears that a copyright treaty for the blind has been signed in Marrakech, and despite a full court press from the MPAA to further water down the agreement, it appears the final version is closer to what the various public interest and blind groups wanted. Apparently, US and EU negotiators were not thrilled with the outcome, but couldn't fight it any more. The full text hasn't been released yet, but from all the commentary out of Marrakech, it sounds like the MPAA failed to poison this treaty. I'm sure we'll have more on this later, but two things to discuss out of this:

1. Contrary to the claims of the USTR about how it would be crazy to negotiate agreements like ACTA, TPP or TAFTA with openness on the drafts being considered, this agreement was negotiated with transparency and (mostly) openness. Once again, we see that the USTR is full of it with its lack of transparency.
2. There is still a ratification question. Expect the MPAA efforts to now shift to blocking the US from actually ratifying the treaty, which is rather important, since the key part of the treaty is letting creative works for the blind enter into various countries, but most of the books would likely originate from the US....

Filed Under: blind, copyright, fair use, marrakech, ratification, three step
Companies: mpaa