For more information about the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights, see this SCCR website

Sara:     Welcome to another episode of copyright chat. Today I have Winston Tabb joining me from Johns Hopkins University he’s the University Librarian and a longtime expert adviser to the copyright and other legal matters committee to the IFLA organization. Welcome.

Winston: Thank you.

Sara: It's so nice to see you and to see you on the verge I understand of your retirement?

Winston: Yes. I think it's going to happen sometime. I just don't know exactly when because I had agreed to stay until my successor was in place. So the process is moving along. I heard a rumor the day will come soon.

Sara:     Well, congratulations! And I know throughout your career you've had a lot of interest and expertise with international copyright issues, both with the copyright and other legal matters committee and with the World Intellectual Property Organization. And I wanted to take this opportunity to kind of pick your brain about that process of how we the United States and IFLA engage with the World Intellectual Property Organization. From what I’ve heard, it seems to move pretty slowly and it’s a very political process. But, correct me if I’m wrong.

Winston: Well, I think one of the first things to understand is what an unusual organization the World Intellectual Property Organization is. Within a particular subgroup, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, which is the one with which we engage, I don’t remember how many branches there are at WIPO, but that’s the most important one for us. What I couldn’t believe when I went to my first meeting and it still amazes me is that you can have an organization with, I think, 185 of so member-states and WIPO functions entirely by consensus. That is, there is never a vote taken in the sense that you would have your normal body where 51% of the people would be able to prevail if they can do that. So any one country, whether it’s Russia or Ukraine, the largest or smallest country, can really bring things to a halt. And that’s why it is so frustrating sometimes because the progress is so glacial. On the other hand, when you do have a victory in an environment like this, it’s really a major one. So the most important thing that has happened, I believe that the 20 or so years that I’ve been engaged there is the adoption of the Marrakesh Treaty and it almost didn’t happen and took quite a long time several false starts and starting over. But part of the reason that happens in actual fact is because of the necessity for having consensus.

Sara: Yeah, that’s a really good point. I mean, I think most people in the world, or I guess maybe not most, but many are aware of that treaty. And it seemed like a pretty smooth process from the outside. But can you give us an insider’s view a little bit of how long this was pending and what happened with the treaty?

Winston: Well, as I said, there were several false starts. So, I went to WIPO for the first time in 2003, which is the time when I was appointed to be the chair of IFLA’s copyright committee. Of course, I was just amazed at how things worked and how they didn’t. My very first meeting that I went to was of the cultural administration group. I think you’re gonna be working with them, if I understand right. So, we’re working on some kind of instrument that would deal with cultures and I was so fascinated to see, but sitting at the table were people from various minority groups. The Sami from the North and the Maori from New Zealand were actually part of the official groups. And it was a very substantive discussion. So I was expecting it to be like that when I went to other meetings such as to the meetings of the standing committee on copyright, but it was definitely not the case. The Standing Committee on Copyright it members of federal agencies only. The United States usually has people there led always by the Paten