Faafoi KrisCOPYRIGHT (MARRAKESH TREATY IMPLEMENTATION) AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to principal ActHon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): This is a relatively non-controversial piece of legislation before the House but I still think it's one that is of huge significance to those with a print disability. So I thought I might just take the opportunity for those who may be listening at home to run over the main parts or aspects of Part 1 of the bill because this is the substantive part of the bill and also to take a chance to thank the Economic Development Science and Innovation (EDSI) Committee who made one substantive change to the bill in the select committee.This bill will allow New Zealand who has signed up to the Marrakesh Treaty to assist those who are blind visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled to access published works. The treaty is intended to make life easier for those people who are referred to in the treaty as beneficiary persons" to obtain accessible format copies of copyright works—and examples of accessible formats are the likes of Braille large print or an audio format. The treaty requires parties or countries who sign up to the treaty to provide an exception to copyright legislation. This exception will allow for the production reproduction distribution import and export of accessible format copies—which I mentioned before—without the permission of the copyright owner. This exception can only be used by authorised entities and persons with print disabilities themselves or persons acting on their behalf. The definition of an "authorised entity" in the bill and in the treaty includes non-profit organisations such as educational institutions libraries and charities serving those with print disabilities.Can I as I said earlier in my contribution thank members of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee who took submissions and considered this piece of legislation and came up with three suggested amendments—one which is substantive which was a change to clause 6 and this was around the removal of what is known as the commercial availability test in the Copyright Act. The report back from the EDSI select committee recommended that clause 6 of the bill be amended to remove the commercial availability test from this bill and also obviously from the Copyright Act. The commercial availability test would require authorised entities to make reasonable efforts to obtain a commercially available accessible format copy of a work within a reasonable time and at an ordinary commercial price before making an accessible format copy of that work.Now I think it's fair to say that a number of—I think a majority—those who submitted to the select committee supported the removal of the commercial availability test. But I think a number of members in the House may have had correspondence or contact with the likes of those who own copyright of works and are concerned about the removal of the commercial availability test. I just wanted to take some time to make sure that we allayed some of those concerns from those stakeholders. Those stakeholders who predominantly represent publishers and authors have raised concerns with members and me directly about the removal of that test and their main concern is that the removal of the test will reduce sales of accessible format copies and therefore reduce the incentive to create accessible format copies. And in some instances they claim that that may increase the price of some of these accessible formats for those who want to get it. We have asked them for evidence of that in jurisdictions that have also removed the commercial availability test. They haven't been able to find that and attempts by officials to try and allay any concerns by looking for evidence of that has so far come up with nothing as well. So I think some of the concerns that they have around the commercial availability test and the effect that that may have on copyright holders might be able to be dealt with in the wider review of the Copyright Act. My five minutes are coming to an end but I would just like to again thank the select committee for their work and if anyone has questions I'm happy to answer them."