The task of developing a global approach to limitations and exceptions (“L&E’s”) is one of the major challenges facing the international copyright system today. As mechanisms of access, L&E’s contribute to the dissemination of knowledge, which in turn is essential for a variety of human activities and values, including liberty, the exercise of political power, and economic, social and personal advancement. Appropriately designed L&E’s may alleviate the needs of people around the world who still lack access to books and other educational materials, and also open up rapid advances in information and communication technologies that are fundamentally transforming the processes of production, dissemination and storage of information. ...
A new international instrument on L&E’s offers a unique opportunity to coordinate, harmonize and balance the heightened (and new) standards of protection set forth in the successive Berne Convention Revisions, the TRIPS Agreement and the WIPO Internet Treaties. ... A global approach to L&E’s would further help: ... ii) to alleviate institutional weakness of States who need diffusion most ([developing countries] and [least developed countries]); iii) to counteract the recent shift to bilateralism and regionalism in international copyright policymaking and; iv) to constrain unilateral ratcheting up of global standards. ...
The minimum goals of an international approach to L&E’s would include: ... ii) facilitation of access to tangible information products; iii) promotion of innovation and competition; iv) support of mechanisms to promote/reinforce fundamental freedoms; and v) provision of consistency and stability in the international copyright framework by the explicit promotion of the normative balance necessary to support knowledge diffusion. ...
Comment. Copyright limitations and exceptions (such as fair use) are not necessary for OA. But limitations and exceptions facilitate access and re-use of non-OA materials in appropriate contexts, particularly (for our purposes) research and education.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 3/08/2008 05:24:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
