Copyright and Coronavirus

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From Publishing Perspectives:

One of the most interesting results of this year’s sessions of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights last month at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva (WIPO) is a new report, The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Creative Industries, Cultural Institutions, Education, and Research.

The world of international policy organizations is intensely fond of its acronyms, and the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is referred to simply as “SCCR.” The International Publishers Association (IPA), also based in Geneva, is the book-publishing body that represents the world industry at this sequence of discussions. So, in non-governmental organization (NGO) parlance, the IPA goes to WIPO’s SCCR as the NGO for publishing.

As you may recall, the SCCR meetings bring together the views and perceived pressure points of international delegates on copyright, not only as it pertains to books and publishing but also to broadcast, archives, libraries, theatrical production, and more. It’s a kind of summit of international stakeholders in industries in which copyright is important.

. . . .

Several points made in the contextual analysis on Pages 5 and 6 of the SCCR report are especially useful.

One of them–as unhappy as it makes us to read it–has to do with the potential for unfinished business relative to the current pandemic: “Far from being an imminent or emerging crisis, it is a sustained crisis: it can last for months or years, over a very long crisis existence phase, and also [be a] cyclical crisis as well because of the different contagious waves.”

The element that publishers are most familiar with, in SCCR terms, is this: “If on one hand, COVID-19 disrupted the market and business ecosystems we traditionally know, on the other hand it has accelerated innovation, introducing the so-called ‘imposed service innovation.’” In publishing, of course, we’ve used the common term “digital acceleration” for this–an “imposed” (indeed) need to muster digital alternatives most particularly in book retail in all formats, but also, for many, in distribution where ebook and audiobook formats were less well established.

And there’s the upbeat part of that digital acceleration: “This specific crisis created a change of mindset and stimulated business opportunities that would never have been considered under normal circumstances.”

. . . .

What Publishing Perspectives readers may find interesting in the report is the look at effects on the audiovisual sector, the music sector, visual arts, museums, and libraries–”nearby” creative industries, each of which has had its own path, to first understanding and then trying to respond to the impact of this protracted emergency. In so many ways, those sister industries’ struggles ran parallel to those of the book business. As bookstores closed, so did art galleries, museums, and auction houses. This, as the roughly half of the music industry’s business was shuttered, as concerts, festivals, tours, and solo performances were cancelled.

Copyright issues in audiovisual abruptly intensified surfaced as the drive toward digitally distributed entertainment in Africa suffered what’s estimated to have been at least a 50-percent loss in potential revenue, the report says, because of “illegal exploitation of creative audiovisual content”–piracy.

Not surprisingly, a line in the report’s conclusion reads, “More attention should be paid to developing e-resources that should respect copyright as a whole, including facilitating uses through licensing, of material in educational and research settings. This could limit piracy damages in crisis times and support the development of local industries while paying attention to creators.”

. . . .

In terms of the piracy issues that plague many of the world’s publishing markets–often with limited and lackluster efforts from law enforcement to help–Al Qasimi called for effective enforcement of copyright protections to shield publishers from “physical and online piracy and to boost the publication of indigenous educational resources and ‘homegrown’ authors.”

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

PG would love to know how many authors from various nations were included among the NGO’s, foundations, large corporations and government agencies attending and, more importantly, speaking at this conference.

2 thoughts on “Copyright and Coronavirus”

  1. In answer to PG’s closing question:

    Not as many as the Copyright Office has ever included in any forum regarding the “orphan works” problem — which is to say “three” this century. (I suppose I count as a fourth because I appeared representing authors — explicitly not my own interests — at an Orphan Works Roundtable lo those many years ago.) The total number of non-authors/non-author-representatives/non-author-organizations who were invited to formally appear is in the neighborhood of 125.

    I’m not happy. As I remarked on my blawg a while back, this is the equivalent of colonial powers dividing up “uncivilized land” while not conferring with the indigenous inhabitants.

    • Its not just copyright.

      A few months back the WH convened a grouping of “experts” on EV tech and purposefully disinvited not only the company selling 80% of the EVs in the US, but also Toyota, Nissan, and VW. Only the UAW and their satrap companies were invited to craft the current wave of federal subsidies.

      My own personal experience relates to a Congressional hearing on advanced rotocraft tech to feature testimony from industry, academia, and the aeronautics R&D community. When the political saw the list of eminences (mostly old white males, mostly jewish, and a couple of women) they asked where were the POCs. When told they were doing hypersonics, rockets, or politics because helicopters weren’t “sexy” enough for the competent POCs, they cancelled the hearing. Not good enough for their photo op dreams.

      That’s how they roll, right?
      The only things that change is whose bread is buttered.

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