Statement by India at WIPO General Assembly on Agenda item no. 26:        Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights 
(October 1-9, 2012)

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 Mr Chairman,

 At the outset, the Indian delegation would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Director General Mr Francis Gurry and his team for the excellent work done to bring the diplomatic conference on protection of audio visual performances to a successful completion. The Beijing treaty is a testimony to the importance of multilateralism and we hope that the ‘spirit of beijing’ continues to thrive and positive outcomes are achieved in various other committees of WIPO.

Mr Chairman,

The Indian Delegation is pleased to see the progress made on draft treaty on limitations and exceptions for making copyrighted works accessible to the visually impaired persons. We also support the recommendation of the standing committee for organizing an intersessional in October to further refine the draft treaty. We hope that a legally binding treaty is adopted at a Diplomatic Conference convened in 2013.

As regards Protection of broadcasting organizations, India reiterates her commitment to comply with the signal based approach towards developing an international treaty to update the protection of broadcasting and cablecasting organizations in the traditional sense consistent with the 2007 General Assembly mandate. India reiterates its opposition to inclusion of any element of webcasting and simulcasting issues under the framework of the proposed Broadcasting Treaty.  India also opposes any attempt to amend the earlier mandate of the General assembly to include ‘retransmission over computer networks’ or ‘retransmission over any other platforms’ because these activities are not broadcasting at all in traditional sense.  We hope that the working document for a treaty on the protection of broadcasting organizations finalised in the 24th SCCR, which includes India’s legal textual proposals as one of the alternatives in the relevant articles of the working document, would be the basis for further negotiations in the 25th SCCR. 

Mr Chairman

India also takes this opportunity to inform that we have recently amended our Copyright Act to allow for protection of works in the digital environment.  The legislation has fairly substantial copyright exceptions for visually impaired and other disabilities, to give access to any work.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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