Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights
Twenty-fourth Session Geneva, July 16 to 25, 2012
Draft WIPO Treaty on Exceptions and Limitations for Persons with Disabilities, Educational and Research Institutions, Libraries and Archives
Updated Proposal by the African Group
Article 21. Limitation on liability of internet service providers for beneficiaries [Broad topic with implications for education and research]
(1) An internet service provider operating in the territory of a Contracting Party whose activities are directed to facilitating access to educational materials and use of exceptions and limitations in this Treaty shall not be liable for infringement of copyright or related rights by reason of the provider’s transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, educational material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the internet service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and
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transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if—
(a) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of an educational institution or individual seeking to enjoy the rights provided by this Treaty;
(b) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process;
(c) the internet service provider does not select the recipients of the material except as an automatic response to the request of the educational institution or person entitled under this Treaty;
(d) no copy of the material made by the internet service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and
(e) the material is transmitted through the system or network without irreversible modification of its content.
(2) An internet service provider operating in the territory of a Contracting Party shall not be liable for infringement of copyright or related rights, whether directly or indirectly, by reason of the provider’s—
(a) intermediate and temporary storage of material for the purposes of caching, as long as it does not modify the material or provide it in a manner inconsistent with access conditions set by the owner of copyright or related rights;
(b) storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the internet service provider;
(c) referring or linking to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity, provided that in cases in which the internet service provider has the right and ability to control such activity, this exemption shall apply only if the internet service provider does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity;
(d) caching of electronic documents; and
(e) transmitting of a universal resource locator or other electronic pointer, that has the effect of instructing a user’s browser to load electronic documents from a third-party server.