Following input from IFLA and other organisations, the World Intellectual Property Organisation has published a new edition of its good practice toolkit for collective management organisations. While including some positives, there are also areas where further improvements are needed.

Where there is a need for libraries to clear permissions in order to use copyrighted works, collective management can offer an effective and efficient way of ensuring compliance with the law.

At the same time, collective management can also go wrong. This happens when there are a lack of effective governance provisions in place, when they over-apply copyright laws and create additional costs for libraries which reduce their ability to serve users, and when they do not efficiently distribute revenues to authors.

As recent stories from South Africa have underlined, it is important for collective management organisations to abide by high standards, at risk not just of undermining their own credibility, but that of copyright as a whole.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation has done useful work in establishing what good practices in terms of effective operation, transparency and relations with creators and users should look like.

With the new edition of their Good Practice Toolkit, libraries have a useful reference point in assessing whether the collective management organisations (CMOs) with which they work are conforming with international standards.

While the toolkit is explicitly not normative (likely due to political pressures), it is nonetheless helpful too as a reference point in arguing for fairer deals and better governance.

The latest edition includes some useful updates, including removing some bias in favour of more extensive copyright, and provisions that encourage more transparency. These include tighter references to possibilities to spend money on activities other than distributions to members.

At the same time, there are some unhelpful changes which leave a lack of clarity over whether CMOs need to show transparency towards users or licensees. Typically, libraries or their host institutions are the licensees, while researchers and students are users. Clearly, libraries are the ones which need this oversight.

Similarly, stronger references to the possibility for libraries to seek remedies when CMOs are not acting fairly or in line with the law would help.

Libraries should nonetheless feel ready to refer to the WIPO guide in their negotiations, alongside more broadly asserting the value and importance of their role in helping their users fulfil their rights to knolwedge, education, science and culture.