Washington-Principles-on-Copyright-Balance-in-Trade-Agreements-November-15-2017.pdf

"There is a growing recognition that the digital environment demands expansions in rights to use copyrighted material without permission of owners to facilitate a range of modern activities from social media, to online learning, to Internet search. With information increasingly available only in digital format, public interest objectives, including to promote education, cultural memory, and access to knowledge, can only be served when copyright retains the flexibility to adapt to changing formats and uses. New research shows that digital user rights can have positive effects on innovation, creativity, and foreign direct investment, but that the adoption of digital user rights has been slow and unequally distributed between developing and wealthy countries ii . In this context, international copyright law - including in trade agreements - should be focused on the traditional goal of achieving “balance” between protections for copyright owners and user rights that serve “the larger public interest, particularly education, research and access to information.”