Late last month, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), WIPO’s “top copyright negotiating forum,” agreed to continue working towards an international treaty that would facilitate access to works for the visually impaired and reading-disabled. After the forum, the United States and other Group B nations garnered controversy for reportedly seeking to block further negotiations.
I thought it’d be worthwhile to spend a day examining the treaty proposal submitted by Brazil, Paraguay and Ecuador. The proposal is aggressive, requiring that signatories implement compulsory licensing regimes and that WIPO play an active role as a centralized record keeper.
The basics
The proposal suggests mandating an exception from liability for copyright infringement for people to make an accessible format of a work or database and distribute it to the visually impaired. The treaty would deny content owners the ability to contract around the right or prohibit circumvention of DRM. The proposal also would allow works for the visually impaired to be imported and exported without constraints.
The exception would only be available for works that aren’t “reasonably available” in a format enabling access for the visually impaired. In addition, for signatories with developed economies, the exception would apply unless the accessible versions were available at a similar or lower price than the price the works are regularly sold at. For signatories with developing economies, the exception would apply unless accessible versions of the works are “affordable, taking into account disparities of incomes for persons who are visually impaired.”
A continued role for WIPO?
The treaty would require that “reasonable efforts” be made to provide notice to copyright owners if a person elected to reproduce or distribute the work for the visually impaired. The notice would include information regarding the right of copyright owners to obtain remuneration for the use, or to challenge the use on the grounds that it isn’t sufficiently restricted to persons who are visually impaired, or that the work is already available in a format for the visually impaired.
WIPO would be entrusted to create an internet accessible database that would allow copyright owners to identify works for purposes of facilitating notice, and to provide information regarding the availability of works in formats for the visually impaired.
Compulsory license
The treaty would ask contracting nations to establish a mechanism for determining adequate compensation for copyright owners, apparently some sort of compulsory license. The system would grant rights holders remuneration that is “reasonable for normal commercial licensing of works,” taking into account the country, population and purposes of the use. The proposal specified that in developing countries, the rates would take into account disparities of incomes for persons who are visually impaired. The agreement would also carve out exceptions from payment for certain formats, such as Braile, and “certain qualified entities.”
Conference of parties
The proposed treaty would create a Conference of Parties that would meet every five years, and in extraordinary session if agreed upon by a quarter of the contracting parties. The Conference would be designated to develop measures to further the implementation and objectives of the treaty.
Recent scholarship from the 
