C4C wishes to congratulate all of the organisations involved and especially two of its members, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), for their efforts in the negotiations to conclude a Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Diplomatic Conference held in Marrakesh, Morocco from June 17 to 28, 2013.

C4C welcomes the agreement reached by the negotiators in the early morning of June 26, which is described by blogger and author Corry Doctorow as an “example of how copyright policy can be crafted to uphold human rights”. C4C applauds the fact that European Union delegates fought back the industry lobbying.

During the negotiations Stevie Wonder called upon the delegates “Let’s get this Signed, Sealed, Delivered (and) I’m Yours”, and now the Treaty has been formally adopted in the plenary session on June 27.

National library and visually impaired organisations will now have the daunting task to push their government to ratify this Treaty and to implement its provisions in proper national law.

And now, we can only conclude by stating: bring it on, Stevie!