India becomes first to ratify Marrakesh Treaty
The first country to ratify the Marrakesh treaty, India is now leading the way in providing equitable access to visually impaired persons or VIPs. Hopefully, the 78 other nations which had also signed the agreement in June last year will follow suit so that 300 million VIPs around the world can benefit. Formally known as the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities, the agreement requires signatories to relax their existing copyright laws so that third parties can easily reproduce reading material in a format, such as Braille, that is accessible to VIPs. It also allows for easier cross-border exchange of such material through Government agencies or non-profit groups. Also, those authorised for such international deliveries have been empowered to circumvent digital locks. Administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Marrakesh Treaty will go a long way in resolving the ‘book famine' faced by VIPs. Across the world, VIPs have access to only one to five percent (depending on location and reading levels) of published works. That this is the case even in an age where the technology exists to make reading material easily available to VIPs is no less than an apartheid against them.
The Marrakesh Agreement is not only a watershed moment for the VIP community but it has also created history in the field of global copyright law. This is the first time that an international agreement recognises the rights of a group of end consumers (and not just protects those of creators, producers or distributors of intellectual property) within the copyright framework. Expectedly, the Marrakesh Agreement faced significant resistance from those who depend on copyright laws to make millions (think publishing houses and media production companies). They feared the treaty will set a precedent for further loosening of the international intellectual property regime and perhaps even scuttle their chances of raking in additional profits in the future from a market designed especially for the blind. For instance, The Motion Picture Association of America, the powerful trade organisation which represents six major Hollywood studios, lobbied until the last minute in Marrakesh for changes that would effectively gut the treaty. MPAA wasn’t entirely successful but it managed to keep movies and videos — which could have meant adding audio to describe the on-screen action or extra-large subtitles for foreign films — out of the ambit. This is one of the reasons why the treaty focuses only on books. Unsurprisingly, the MPAA received much support from the US Government which, in turn, opposed the very existence of such a treaty and even pressured other countries to toe its line. However, it was the nations of the Global South including India, alongside Brazil, Egypt, Ecuador, Chile, Algeria and Nigeria, that resisted Western pressure and pushed a historic treaty that allows for equal opportunity and individual development.