Supporting national and regional copyright reform
IFLA aids efforts at the national level to ensure that libraries have modern and effective copyright laws at the national level that enable them to carry out their missions.
While work at the global level sets the context and is essential for enabling cross-border activities, decisions at the national and regional level remain critical.
IFLA therefore assists its members in advocating for reforms at the national or regional level that provide the best possible framework for libraries. This enables activities such as lending, preservation, research or education copying, and text-and-data mining.
To do this, IFLA offers copyright expertise developed in collaboration with our Members and other experts, in particular through our Advisory Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters (CLM).
IFLA sends letters, responds to consultations, and offers suggestions and advice concerning copyright reforms relating to libraries. In doing so, we work to highlight and promote good practices globally, in line with our work at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Together with our wider work to build advocacy capacity across the library field, we hope to ensure that libraries are ready and able to engage in copyright reforms. This will give libraries the best opportunity to ensure that their needs are reflected in law, and so be able to fulfil their missions.
We encourage librarians to contact us to notify us of upcoming reforms and to provide updates on reforms that are in progress or recently completed. This allows us to contribute and share good practices, as well as ensure our monitoring is up to date.