You might have seen on our social media channels that I was in Geneva last week attending WIPO’s (The World Intellectual Property Office) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights in my capacity as Chair of the IAWG. And you may well have wondered why? The SCCR is a standing committee that meets twice a year to discuss an agenda of matters related to copyright and intellectual property. Nearly every country in the world can send a national representative, and members of Civil Society – NGOs, representative organisations etc – get to attend as observers. And crucially, we get to deliver one-minute-long interventions to the room in the hope that our voices are taken into account when policy is being decided upon.

There’s a big debate happening in this committee plenary around Limitations & Exceptions in copyright legislation – really essential for libraries, archives and cultural institutions who historically have been granted an exception to paying commercial copyright fees that they would not be able to afford. But in this digital era, tech companies are trying to use those exceptions to claim that they also don’t need to pay for copyright. This – and how we strengthen existing copyright legislation to factor in the digital environment that we all now work in – and how we ensure that tech companies don’t just ignore standards that have worked for centuries – is a big part of what I speak on when I attend a plenary like this.

As any of you who have followed the slow progress of the European Copyright Directive know – change doesn’t happen quickly in a bureaucratic setting. But it is really important that our voices are part of the conversation. There are a lot of politicians and advisors speaking in the room. And it makes a real difference when they can also hear directly from the artists who are impacted in very real ways by the choices that they make. 

Jennifer Davidson

Chair of the Writers’ Guild of Ireland