New World Trade Agreement Will Continue to Protect Music Creators

The National Music Council of the United States, along with its music community colleagues, is extremely gratified that its efforts to curb the illegitimate expansion of the fair use doctrine in various foreign nations during the global pandemic have met with success! The United States Trade Representative and the Biden Administration has heard our voices, and responded by ensuring that while massive global efforts to fight COVID-19 must and will continue unabated and at full speed, those actions cannot be permitted to lead to the gutting of global copyright protections for no valid reason.

Final wording of the joint agreement, which further delineates Covid-19 exemptions to the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO), are still being worked out. The Trips Agreement establishes minimum standards of protection that each government has to give to the IP of fellow WTO members. The new agreement will continue to narrowly define Covid-based, fair-use exemptions for unauthorized copyright uses, consistent with the strict, general limits currently in place.