Copyright (Marrakesh Treaty Implementation) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. When I was a very new MP, one of the first community visits I ever made was to the Blind Foundation, and one of the first discussions I ever had at that meeting was about where New Zealand’s position was with regards to the Marrakesh Treaty. As a new MP, I had no idea of what the Marrakesh Treaty was. Well, they proceeded to tell me exactly what that was and what they needed to happen.

So the Marrakesh Treaty, as I understand, at that stage required a certain number of nations to sign up to it before it was triggered, and once it was triggered, as the nations signed up to the treaty, as a nation we were then required to make the necessary changes to our legislation—in this case, our copyright legislation—to ensure provision of material for people with a visual impairment, so that they could use that material for whatever reason, whether it was for recreational purposes or whether it was for educational purposes or the like. So it was quite fortuitous that I happened to then become a member of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, who were able to hear the submissions on this particular legislation—the Copyright (Marrakesh Treaty Implementation) Amendment Bill.

There were three to four main groups of submitters to this particular legislation. There were providers of support to people with visual impairments or disability groups like the Blind Foundation. There were publishers and authors, and then there were academic institutions. I’ll go through each of those groups and just do a highlight, I guess, of the key concerns that they raised.

The Blind Foundation and other provider organisations were keen to ensure that the members of these organisations and the people who used their services could get access to the materials that they needed—and, generally speaking, this would be books, texts primarily—and allow for the conversion of that material into Braille. Sometimes that material was already available; it had already been developed either by another entity or by the author and publishers themselves. Sometimes it was not available. So what organisations like the Blind Foundation, for example, would do was they would create that material themselves. They would convert these texts into Braille for the use of their members.

The discussion that we had with regards to publishers and authors was quite different, and their concern—authors, in particular—was about their ability to retain an income and a livelihood from the material that they themselves produced. It was quite an interesting discussion that we had with regards to ensuring that we could ensure that they could still have the opportunity to have an income and we could find a mechanism that would allow for the development of that material into the appropriate format for end-users. Publishers, likewise, had a concern that they would be, potentially, having to incur quite huge costs to convert material into Braille.

Then the last group of submitters—the academic institutions—was actually, for the select committee, the one that provided the most compelling evidence to us. The academic institutions spoke about how they would have somebody sign up to a course or a degree programme and then have to wait for a significant period of time for that material to then be converted into a format that they could use in their study. In fact, their studies had often commenced or were quite well advanced before that material was available. So it led us to consider what would be a useful way to ensure that institutions had the appropriate material that they needed for their students in a timely way that didn’t compromise their study.

The committee examined what was called an “authorised entity”. Now, that could be the Blind Foundation providing material for its members, or it could be an academic institution which was also providing material for its students. The ability of those authorised entities to find material in a timely way was probably the topic of the most discussion that we had on this particular matter. What we looked at was some countries, and the legislation as it came to us in select committee had within it the provision for the commercial availability test.

Now, what this legislation required was for the entity—the academic institution primarily—to ask publishers and authors or examine across the globe whether there was already a commercially available text that they could then use. What we found, and what some of the academic institutions told us, was that their engagement with publishers and with authors sometimes meant that those copies weren’t accessed easily, because they weren’t engaging fully with academic institutions. So somebody from the university might write to the publisher, for example, and say, “We are looking for a commercially available copy of this particular text. Do you have it?”

Often, the publishers would not respond, so they found themselves in the situation of having to develop that resource themselves. So at committee what we thought was what I think was quite an elegant solution to that—it’s something that the member Brett Hudson spoke about in his contribution. What we decided to do was to take out the commercial availability test, because what we felt that would do was two things. It would actually provide an incentive to publishers to provide the material already in a format that was accessible for people with visual impairments, and it would also create a market for that material for others to access. We thought that that was quite an elegant solution. As a result of that there was quite significant rework of section 69, looking at the authorised entity types and also the accessible formats and how they were then going to be available. What that provided was an opportunity for us also to discuss a couple of things. Unfortunately, this is not reflected in the report as it came back to the House, but it was certainly an issue that was raised by the committee, and that was having a register of sorts of commercially available copies. What was also out of scope, but an issue that we did raise at committee, was looking at how we might service other disability communities—particularly people who might have a hearing disability, for example. We also looked at the development of guidelines, because there are no provisions under section 79 of the Copyright Act 1994 where an authorised entity may breach the conditions experienced under section 69. So we did have a look at that.

It was a fascinating discussion. I’m pleased that the committee made the changes that it did, and I think they were sensible, lively discussions. I think there was broad consensus across the committee on the changes that needed to be made. Just one final point about the commercial availability test: of the 55 or so countries that have signed up to the Marrakesh Treaty, only four have this test. So we were not out of line with the rest of the world on this matter. I am the final speaker on this, and it is my duty to commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Bill read a second time.