WIPO Director General Addresses the Future of Copyright

GENEVA - The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Director General Francis Gurry said that copyright needs to evolve to current technological realities or risk becoming irrelevant.

Speaking at a conference hosted by Australia’s Faculty of Law of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) on the future of copyright, Gurry said there is no “single magical answer” to the development of a successful policy response to the challenges facing copyright in the digital age, but a combination of “law, infrastructure, cultural change, institutional collaboration and better business models.”

Gurry said the central question facing the evolution of copyright policy is how to maintain a balance between availability of cultural works at affordable prices while assuring a dignified economic existence for creators and performers. Digital technology is having a radical impact on those balances. “Rather than resist it, we need to accept the inevitability of technological change and to seek an intelligent engagement with it,” he said. “There is, in any case, no other choice – either the copyright system adapts to the natural advantage that has evolved or it will perish.”