IFRRO has supported the Brazilian RRO Associação Brasileira de Direitos Reprográficos (ABDR) in its protests against proposed amendments to the Brazilian Copyright act.
In a letter to Juca Ferreira, the Brazilian Minister of Culture, while supporting some amendments which aim at sustaining collective management of rights in printed works, IFRRO points out that the bill appears to give a general right of access to copyright material which would conflict with the author’s exclusive rights in the Berne Convention and the “3 Step Test” in relation to exceptions and limitations.
The basic principle in copyright is that the creator of a work shall also be granted the exclusive right to authorise the use of it. This applies to all kinds of intellectual property and dates back several centuries before any copyright legislation. It is included in international treaties and conventions and national legislation on copyright. Copyright legislation also allows for exceptions to be made to the exclusive rights to allow restricted access to a work without prior authorization of the copyright holder when three specific conditions are all three met: the use must be a special case, not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interest of the author and not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work. The problem comes if the legislation speaks of a general right of access, which would inevitably conflict with the principle of exclusive rights of the creator to authorise or prevent access to his or her work. “We believe that copyright legislation is best built on the long accepted and well founded principles of exclusive rights of the creator accompanied with carefully crafted exceptions on the basis of criteria established in international instruments” said Olav Stokkmo, the IFRRO CEO, adding that if the amendments are carried forward as they currently read the publishing industry and the creator’s possibility to live off his/her work would be seriously jeopardized.
IFRRO invites the government to withdraw several of the proposed amendments and instead facilitate a stakeholder dialogue to enable enhanced legal access to copyright works based on individual and collective licensing.
