User:Pajz/marrakesh draft

The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled (also known as the Marrakesh VIP Treaty, occasionally abbreviated as MVT ) is a treaty in the area of copyright law adopted in Marrakesh, Morocco, on 27 June 2013. The treaty allows for copyright exceptions to facilitate the creation of accessible versions of books and other copyrighted works for visually impaired persons. It sets a norm for countries ratifying the treaty to have a domestic copyright exception covering these activities, and allowing for the import and export of such materials.

The Marrakesh Treaty entered into force on 30 September 2016, three months after the accession of the twentieth party.

Eligible parties
The Marrakesh Treaty is open for ratification or accession to all of the—currently 191 —member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Membership in other WIPO-administered treaties, such as the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), is not required. WIPO's General Assembly can also admit an intergovernmental organisation to the Marrakesh Treaty if the organisation was authorised to join the treaty by its members and can, in the areas covered by the treaty, enact legislation that is binding on all its members. As a "concrete application of this general rule", it is expressly stated that the European Union (EU), which issued a declaration at the Diplomatic Conference in Marrakesh confirming its compliance with these requirements, is entitled to join.

These eligibility criteria are effectively the same as in other WIPO-administered copyright treaties.

Beneficiary persons
As the Marrakesh Treaty's full name suggests, it is not intended to facilitate the wider public's access to works, but is specifically aimed at addressing the situation of blind (1), visually impaired (2) or otherwise print disabled (3) individuals. The Treaty collectively refers to them as "beneficiary persons".

(1) While "blind" individuals are expressly mentioned, the term "blind" is nowhere defined in the Marrakesh Treaty. It has been suggested that this allows countries to use existing, national definitions of blindness (which often do not require a total loss of visual acuity or visual field). The need for an exact definition of "blind" in the Marrakesh Treaty is, however, lessened by the fact that the presence of a substantial visual impairment is sufficient to qualify for the benefits provided under the treaty (see next paragraph).

(2) Aside from the blind, the Marrakesh Treaty also benefits those who have "a visual impairment or a perceptual or reading disability which cannot be improved to give visual function substantially equivalent to that of a person who has no such impairment or disability and so is unable to read printed works to substantially the same degree as a person without an impairment or disability". This clarifies that an individual's visual impairment does not need to rise to the level of blindness to justify protection under the Treaty. It also extends the group of beneficiaries to persons whose visual system is unimpaired but whose ability to read is instead constrained by a disability affecting the processing of visual information or its interpretation as language. According to commentators, this group of individuals includes, among others, people suffering from severe dyslexia. As regards visual impairments, the provision does not extend to individuals whose normal vision can be restored through the use of glasses or lenses. A challenge posed by this approach is that whether a given condition can be sufficiently improved is, in practice, highly dependant on the availability of treatment. While it may be objectively easy to mitigate the effects of a given visual impairment, the affected individual may live in an area of the world where the necessary medical services are not readily available, or where the cost of treatment is prohibitively high. Still, it is widely assumed that individuals, to qualify as beneficiaries, need to undergo certain diagnostic procedures and treatments, while an agreed statement to the Marrakesh Treaty clarifies that it is not necessary to exhaust all possible medical diagnostic procedures and treatments.

(3) Finally, the scope of beneficiaries includes persons that are "otherwise unable, through physical disability, to hold or manipulate a book or to focus or move the eyes to the extent that would be normally acceptable for reading". In the literature, one commentator points to amputation, chronic arthritis, paraplegia and Parkinson's disease as examples of such a condition; others mention quadriplegia, cerebral palsy, as well as motor-neuron and neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

It is worth noting that the Marrakesh Treaty does not—unlike some national laws—stipulate different scopes of operation dependent on the nature of the beneficiary: All of the benefits it provides for are to be provided to all beneficiary persons.

Works covered
The Marrakesh Treaty is concerned solely with "literary and artistic works" pursuant to the Berne Convention "in the form of text, notation and/or related illustrations". It is common for treaties in the area of copyright law to build upon definitions from the (repeatedly revised) Berne Convention of 1886, which today is adhered to by almost all states of the world. The limitation to copies "in the form of text, notation and/or related illustrations" was specifically developped for the Marrakesh Treaty and is novel to international copyright law.

The term "literary and artistic works" is defined in Berne Article 2 as encompassing "every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain". The definition is very broad, considerably broader than a common understanding of the adjectives "literary", "scientific" and "artistic" might suggest, and extends, inter alia, to books, dramatic works, photographs, maps, drawings, paintings, sculptures, works of applied art, and three-dimensional scientific models. However, due to the limitation to copies "in the form of text, notation and/or related illustrations", the set of qualifying material is effectively narrowed down. For instance, the use of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is facilitated by Marrakesh provided that the specific copy concerned is a text edition of the work (and, therefore, constitutes a copy "in the form of text"), whereas a video recording of a performance of the same work would fall outside the scope of the Marrakesh Treaty. Similarly, the use of a musical composition is facilitated by Marrakesh if it is fixed in notation (say, in sheet music); the use of the same composition in the form of a sound recording, on the other hand, would not be governed by Marrakesh.

Key provisions
<!-- Schutzgegenstand des Urheberrechts ist das Werk. Der Marrakesch-Vertrag möchte allerdings nicht den Zugang der Begünstigten zu allen Werken erleichtern, sondern beschränkt sich auf Werke der Literatur und Kunst im Sinne der Revidierten Berner Übereinkunft (RBÜ) „in Form von Text, Notation und/oder diesbezüglichen Illustrationen“. Die RBÜ wiederum versteht Werke der Literatur und Kunst als „Erzeugnisse auf dem Gebiet der Literatur, Wissenschaft und Kunst, ohne Rücksicht auf die Art und Form des Ausdrucks“. Werke der Literatur und Kunst „in Form von Text“ sind etwa Bücher (gleich ob wissenschaftlicher oder belletristischer Natur), Broschüren, Zeitschriften, Drehbücher und gedruckte Predigten. In Form von „Notation“ (notation) liegen zum Beispiel Musikwerke in Notenschrift vor; als Zugangserleichterung ist in diesem Fall etwa an Transkriptionen in Braille-Musikschrift gedacht. Mit den „diesbezüglichen Illustrationen“ (related illustrations) sind Illustrationen im Kontext von Werken der Literatur und Kunst in Form von Text oder Notation gemeint. Der Marrakesch-Vertrag will also beispielsweise auch den Zugang zu Abbildungen erleichtern, wenn und soweit diese im Rahmen eines wissenschaftlichen Artikels Verwendung finden.

In einer vereinbarten Erklärung ist ergänzend festgehalten, dass der Werkbegriff auch Werke in einem Audioformat erfasst. Damit sind insbesondere Hörbücher gemeint, die auch explizit als Beispiel genannt werden. Die weiter gefasste Wortwahl in der vereinbarten Erklärung ist der Überlegung geschuldet, dass etwa auch Zeitschriftenartikel als gesprochene Fassung existieren können – diese sollten ebenfalls privilegiert werden. Aufnahmen von Musikwerken fallen hingegen – anders als Aufzeichnungen in Notenschrift – trotz der vereinbarten Erklärung nicht unter den Werkbegriff des Marrakesch-Vertrags, weil sie nicht in Form von Text oder Notation vorliegen. Andere Werke, die nicht unter den Werkbegriff des Marrakesch-Vertrags fallen, sind audiovisuelle Werke wie insbesondere Filmwerke.

Zusätzlich erforderlich ist, dass das betreffende Werk veröffentlicht oder auf anderen Trägern der Öffentlichkeit verfügbar gemacht worden ist. Auch diese Einschränkung findet ihren Niederschlag bereits im vollständigen Titel des Vertrags („zu veröffentlichten Werken“; eigene Hervorhebung). Sie verhindert Konflikte mit dem Erstveröffentlichungsrecht des Urhebers, das in vielen Urheberrechtsordnungen – insbesondere des Civil Law – als Bestandteil des Urheberpersönlichkeitsrechts vorgesehen ist.

Treaty
Sixty three (recently 28 European countries also ratified) countries signed the treaty as of the close of the diplomatic conference in Marrakesh. The ratification of 20 states was required for the treaty to enter into effect; the 20th ratification was received on 30 June 2016, and the treaty entered into force on 30 September 2016.

Ratification
India was the first country to ratify the treaty, on 24 July 2014. As of October 15, 2018, 80 countries have signed the Treaty and 82 states have ratified it including EU's 28 member-states who ratified as one entity (notification number 45), and most recently Bolivia and the Cook Islands

The European Union ratified the treaty for all 28 members on October 1, 2018. The provisions of the Treaty will go into effect across the EU (including in the United Kingdom) on January 1, 2019. On September 20, 2017 the EU Commission published a directive and a regulation on the Marrakesh treaty that has to be transposed into national law, in all 28 member states, deadline for transposition: October 11, 2018. Member states are required to update their national laws to implement the Treaty's requirements later in 2018. This followed a lengthy and occasionally controversial process that began shortly after the treaty was initially passed. In March 2015, the Council of the European Union accused the European Commission of delaying the adoption of the treaty by EU and called upon the Commission "to submit without delay the necessary legislative proposal". There is continued opposition by some EU member states.

On February 8, 2019, the United States of America finally joined the treaty.

On June 28, 2018, the U.S. Senate approved it and the implementation bill without apparent opposition; the House approved S.2559 via unanimous consent on September 25 2018. The bill and the Treaty were signed into law by the President on October 9, 2018. -->