Author: InfoJustice Eds.

Ensuring the Visibility and Accessibility of European Creative Content on the World Market: The Need for Copyright Data Improvement in the Light of New Technologies

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Mar 15, 2021 | AI, Regional Fora, User Rights Network

[Martin Senftleben, Thomas Margoni, Daniel Antal, Balázs Bodó, Stef van Gompel, Christian Handke, Martin Kretschmer, Joost Poort, João Quintais and Sebastian Felix Schwemer] Abstract: In the European Strategy for Data, the European Commission highlighted the EU’s ambition to acquire a leading role in the data economy. At the same time, the Commission conceded that the EU would have to increase its pools of quality data available for use and re-use. In the creative industries, this need for enhanced data quality and interoperability is particularly strong. Without data improvement, unprecedented opportunities for monetising the wide variety of EU creative and making this content available for new technologies, such as artificial intelligence training systems, will most probably be lost.

EIFL and IFLA Issue a Joint Statement Calling on the World Trade Organization to Reduce Burdens on the World’s Poorest Countries

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Mar 10, 2021 | Multilateral Fora

[Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL and IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) have called on the Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to extend international trade law measures which reduce burdens on the poorest countries, and allow them to set regulatory frameworks for copyright to enable their libraries to support education, research and cultural participation. The call comes ahead of a formal meeting of the WTO Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), that monitors implementation of the TRIPS Agreement. The meeting, that takes place on 10-11 March 2021, will discuss, among other issues, a request by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to extend an exemption for LDCs from implementing the substantive obligations for protection and enforcement of IP rights, including copyright, in the TRIPS Agreement.

Yes, export bans on vaccines are a problem, but why is the supply of vaccines so limited in the first place?

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Mar 9, 2021 | Academic Resources, Coronavirus, Multilateral Fora

[Deborah Gleeson] …Much of the reporting on vaccine nationalism tends to focus on the hoarding of vaccines by particular countries. But we should question why the supply of vaccines is so limited in the first place. This comes down to privately held monopolies on the intellectual property and other types of knowledge, data and information needed for making vaccines. While there is manufacturing capacity available globally to ramp up vaccine production, the exclusive rights to make and sell the vaccines are held by a small number of companies. This is despite a huge investment of public funding in the development of many vaccines.

Update on Publisher’s Copyright Infringement Suit Against Sci-Hub and LibGen in India

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Mar 8, 2021 | Academic Resources, IP & Research, Limitations and Exceptions, User Rights Network

[Anubha Sinha] This blog post is an update on the copyright infringement suit filed against Sci-Hub and LibGen in the Delhi High Court by Elsevier Ltd, Wiley India, and American Chemical Society… Indian science and academia realise that their right to research is at stake. In January, several Indian scientists and advocacy organisations applied to intervene in the case, to persuade the court to not issue an interim or permanent injunction for dynamic blocking of the websites.

Libraries and Open Data in 2021: Access, Skills, Engagement

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Mar 6, 2021 | Open, User Rights Network

[International Federation of Library Associations] 6 March 2021 marks the annual Open Data Day. This international celebration brings together a wide range of stakeholders – from librarians and public servants to developers and statisticians – to showcase creative uses and benefits of open data to drive development and help address today’s societal challenges.

Creation is Not a Closed Book Exam: Developing the Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Mar 1, 2021 | Fair Use

[Will Cross and Meredith Jacob] You can learn a lot from which questions people ask you, and which they don’t. As educators and advocates for building openly-licensed textbooks and other open educational resources (OER), we spend a lot of our time at conferences and workshops talking about how to understand and use Creative Commons licenses. As we’ve done presentations over the past few years, however, we noticed that attendees generally listened politely to our presentation and then spent the entire question and discussion period asking pointed questions about how fair use fits in.

Declaration from Members of the European Parliament to urge the Commission and Member States not to block the TRIPS waiver at the WTO and to support global access to COVID-19 vaccines

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Mar 1, 2021 | Coronavirus, Multilateral Fora

[Joint statement by 100 MEPs] We, Members of the European Parliament, urge the European Commission and the European Council to review their opposition to the TRIPS waiver proposal at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which serves to enable greater access to affordable COVID-19 health technologies, including vaccines, in particular for developing and middle income countries. This call comes in view of the European Council meeting of 25 February 2021 and the crucial decision to be made by all Member States at the WTO General Council on 1-2 March 2021.

Hundreds of Prominent US Civil Society Organizations Call on Pres. Biden to Stop Blocking COVID-19 WTO Waiver to Boost Vaccines, Treatments Worldwide

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Feb 26, 2021 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus, News

[Public Citizen] Today, U.S. consumer, faith, health, labor, human rights, development and other civil society groups urged the White House to support an emergency COVID-19 waiver of World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property rules, so that greater supplies of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests can be produced in as many places as possible as quickly as possible. The pandemic cannot be stopped anywhere unless vaccines, tests, and treatments are available everywhere, so variants that evade current vaccines do not develop. At a press conference joined by Reps. Rosa DeLauro, (D-Conn.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), U.S. civil society leaders released a letter signed by hundreds of prominent U.S. organizations calling on the Biden administration to join more than 100 nations in support of the waiver. The Trump administration led a handful of countries opposed to the waiver at the WTO. At two recent WTO committee meetings, the new administration has not reversed the Trump era obstruction of the waiver.

Fair Use Jurisprudence 2019–2021

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Feb 26, 2021 | Academic Resources, Fair Use

[Jack Lerner, Luke Hartman, and Jordin Wilcher] We are excited to celebrate Fair Use Week with a new report from the UC Irvine School of Law’s Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology (IPAT) Clinic: Fair Use Jurisprudence 2019–2021: A Comprehensive Review… At the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic, we work with independent filmmakers to make sure that when they do need to make fair use, they can do so responsibly, appropriately, and safely. Over the past couple of years, our Filmmaker Counseling team began to hear of a rising number of fair use opinions coming out of the federal courts, and we decided to embark on an exhaustive study of recent fair use decisions in copyright infringement cases. In total, we identified and analyzed seventy-two opinions issued by federal courts and made available on Westlaw or Lexis between January 1, 2019, and February 25, 2021. In our report, we provide abstracts of 72 opinions along with some commentary on selected cases.

EIFL CALLS ON WTO TO SUPPORT LDC REQUEST

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Feb 17, 2021 | Limitations and Exceptions, Multilateral Fora

[Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL has called on the World Trade Organization (WTO) to grant a request by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to extend the LDC TRIPS exemption for as long as a country remains an LDC. Article 66.1 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) grants Least Developed Countries (LDCs) an exemption from implementing the substantive obligations for protection and enforcement of IP rights, including copyright… It shields LDCs from having to adopt higher standards of copyright protection, provides policy space to craft copyright exceptions, such as for libraries and education, to support national priorities on education, literacy, research and innovation, and it avoids costly obligations with regard to the establishment of new criminal procedures, border controls, and other enforcement measures.

CASE Act: Good or Bad News for Filmmakers?

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Feb 10, 2021 | Academic Resources, Domestic Legislation

[AU Center for Media and Social Impact] In December, the CASE Act (for Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement) was quietly slipped into must-pass legislation. Pushed heavily by large copyright holders and batted down by copyright-flexibility advocates for years, it is now law. It could affect how creators of all kinds, including filmmakers, experience the employment of fair use in practice.

On Feb. 5, the Center for Media & Social Impact in conjunction with its partners—University Film and Video Association’s Documentary Working Group, D-Word, International Documentary Association, Dallas Videofest, and AU’s School of Communication, hosted a webinar, “What Does the CASE Act Mean for Filmmakers and Fair Use?” The recorded livestream of the webinar is available on the School of Communication’s YouTube channel.

COMMUNIA salon on the role of ex-ante user rights safeguards in implementing Article 17

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Jan 21, 2021 | Blog

[Communia Association] On the 26th of January at 1530 (CET) we are hosting the first COMMUNIA salon of 2021. This edition will focus on the most controversial question of the discussions surrounding the implementation of Article 17: the need to introduce ex-ante user rights safeguards in national implementations of the directive, to ensure that legitimate uses of third party works cannot be automatically blocked.

Open Education Lightning Talks: Recordings and Slides

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Jan 15, 2021 | Open

[Cable Green] In December, the CC Open Education Platform hosted a series of open education “lightning talks” (7 minutes + Q&A) in which open education practitioners discussed their work and answered questions with a global audience. We are grateful to all 24 speakers for sharing their open education work. To maximize access, we recorded all of the talks with the permission of the speakers. Many of the speakers have also shared their slides and other resources.

European Digital Single Market Directive Implementaion Update: More Propsals to Protect User Rights

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Jan 10, 2021 | Limitations and Exceptions, Regional Fora, User Rights Network

[Communia Association] The implementation deadline for the Copyright in the Digital Single Market is a mere five months ahead of us. On the 7th of June, the EU Member States are expected to have implemented the 2019 update of the EU copyright rules. With less than half a year to go, it is looking increasingly unlikely that more than a small handful of Member States will manage to implement the new provisions by the deadline. In this post, we are taking stock of the implementation process focusing on what has changed since our update from a month ago.

Austrian Article 17 proposal: The high road towards implementation?

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 21, 2020 | Domestic Legislation, Regional Fora, User Rights Network

[Paul Keller] So far there we have seen two different approaches to implementing Article 17 into national copyright legislation. On the one hand, we have countries like France, the Netherlands, or Croatia who have presented implementation proposals that stick as closely as possible to the language and the structure of Article 17 while implementing its provisions within the structure of their existing copyright acts. In doing so these implementations essentially kick the can down the road with regards to figuring out how the conflicting requirements to filter (17(4)) and requirements to ensure that legal uploads are not filtered out (17(7)) can be reconciled. In the end, none of these implementation proposals offer a convincing mechanism for ensuring that creators get remunerated and that users’ rights are not violated. On the other hand, we have the German approach that proposes to implement Article 17 via a separate “copyright-service-provider law” (“Urgeberrechts Diensteanbieter Gesetz”) that substantially departs from the language in an attempt to capture the structure and effet utile of the directive. Click here for more.

WIPO’s missed opportunity to produce guidance on copyright exceptions hits education during pandemic

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 14, 2020 | Limitations and Exceptions, Multilateral Fora, User Rights Network, WIPO

[Education International] A legal instrument on copyright exceptions for the use of materials for teaching, learning, research, and the work of cultural heritage organisations is still not available. According to Education International, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) missed an opportunity at its recent Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) to show leadership on this issue.

Urgently waive intellectual property rules for vaccine

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 12, 2020 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus, Multilateral Fora

[Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch] Governments should stop blocking a temporary waiver of some global intellectual property rules that will help boost global access to COVID-19 vaccines, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today ahead of a key World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Geneva on December 10, 2020. If adopted, the waiver proposal would enable more governments to fulfil their obligations to respect the rights to life and health. The warning comes as vaccinations for COVID-19 begin in the United Kingdom, and are likely to begin in other countries in the near future.

Webinar – Guaranteeing Access to Medicines: Reforming Trade and Investment Treaties in the COVID-19 Era

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 9, 2020 | Access to Medicine, Coronavirus, Events

[December 11, 2020 | 7am EST] Eight months into COVID-19, what is the status of the international investment regime and access to essential medicines? The GDP Center’s Working Group on Trade and Access to Medicines will host a panel discussion on trade, investment regime, and access to essential medicines. The event is co-sponsored with the South Centre, an intergovernmental organization of developing nations based in Switzerland.

Copyright and COVID-19: Has WIPO learned nothing from the pandemic?

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 9, 2020 | Coronavirus, Limitations and Exceptions, Multilateral Fora, User Rights Network

[Teresa Nobre] In November, Communia participated in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) 40th session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR), the most important forum at the global level for copyright rulemaking… Communia and other civil society observers were expecting the Committee to consider the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on these public interest activities, and take appropriate action. However, WIPO member states had previously decided that, due to the format of the meeting, they would not engage in negotiations on any of the items on their agenda. Therefore, despite references to the problems caused by the pandemic in several Delegations’ statements, none put forward any proposal to deal with these issues. Click here for more.

Researchers, librarians, filmmakers and teachers are waiting for the copyright reforms the government has promised

Posted by InfoJustice Eds. | Dec 9, 2020 | Academic Resources, Domestic Legislation, Limitations and Exceptions

[Kylie Pappalardo] In August, the communications minister announced a series of changes to copyright laws to “better support the needs of Australians and public institutions to access material in an increasingly digital environment”. These changes are long overdue. But the year is ending, and we are yet to see the legislation. The most important change is to ensure access to so-called orphan works.

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