InfoJustice Eds.

InfoJustice Eds.

  • Joined: July 15, 2019
  • Articles: 288

Open Education and Artificial Scarcity in Hard Times

[Rory Mir] The sudden move to remote education by universities this year has forced the inevitable: the move to an online education. While most universities won’t be fully remote, having course materials online was already becoming the norm before the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year it has become mandatory for millions of educators and students. As academia recovers from this crisis, and hopefully prepares for the next one, the choices we make will send us down one of two paths. We can move towards a future of online education which replicates the artificial scarcity of traditional publishing, or take a path which fosters an abundance of free materials by embracing the principles of open access and open education.

Access to medical supplies and devices — the lesser known story of COVID-19 and medical monopoly

[Salimah Valiani] Discussions around access to potential vaccines for COVID-19 are widespread, particularly in the global South. Much less discussed is the lack of access to already existing medical technology crucial to stemming the spread of the novel coronavirus and assisting its most severely affected victims. The latter is the outcome of the monopoly control of medical technology — a phenomenon stretching at least as long as the monopoly of Big PHARMA — though much less understood.

UNAIDS supports a temporary WTO waiver from certain obligations of the TRIPS Agreement in relation to the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19

[UNAIDS Press Statement] Today, the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Council meets to consider a proposal presented by the Governments of South Africa and India for a temporary waiver of certain TRIPS obligations in order to facilitate an appropriate response to COVID-19. The aim is to create certainty and clarity, guaranteeing freedom to operate, innovate, procure and scale up manufacturing capacities in essential health technologies at the required scale. The waiver would reduce transaction costs and eliminate key barriers across the research and development cycle and the supply chain for the access and delivery of health technologies to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19.

Civil Society ORganizations call for strong support for TRIPS waiver to combat COVID-19

[Kanaga Raja] Nearly 380 civil society organizations have urged Members of the World Trade Organization to strongly support the adoption of a draft decision proposed by India and South Africa for a waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to combat the worsening COVID-19 pandemic. India and South Africa have submitted a proposal (IP/C/W/669) to the WTO TRIPS Council on a “Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19”.

Education Groups Drop Their Lawsuit Against Public.Resource.Org, Give Up Their Quest to Paywall the Law

[Mitch Stoltz] This week, open and equitable access to the law got a bit closer. For many years, EFF, along with co-counsel at Fenwick & West and attorney David Halperin, has defended Public.Resource.Org in its quest to improve public access to the law — including standards, like the National Electrical Code, that legislators and agencies have made into binding regulations. In two companion lawsuits, six standards development organizations sued Public Resource in 2013 for posting standards online. They accused Public Resource of copyright infringement and demanded the right to keep the law behind paywalls.

Taming the upload filters: Pre-flagging vs. match and flag

[Paul Keller] One of the most important elements of any implementation of Article 17 will be how platforms can reconcile the use of automated content filtering with the requirement not to prevent the availability of legitimate uploads. While most implementation proposals that we have seen so far are silent on this crucial question, both the German discussion proposal and the Commission’s consultation proposal contain specific mechanisms that are intended to ensure that automated content filters do not block legitimate uploads, and that uploads are subject to human review if they are not obviously/likely infringing.

Letter to President Ramaphosa on the Proposed Covid-19 Waiver, by 43 South Africa and India at the WTO, From South Africa-Affiliated Academics, Researchers and Teachers

South Africa, along with India, has adopted a ground-breaking position at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with the tabling of the proposal for a “Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19”. The proposal will be on the agenda of the WTO TRIPS Council on 15-16 October 2020. As a group of academics, researchers and teachers affiliated to various South African institutions, we declare our strong support for this proposal.

Implementation update: French Parliament gives carte blanche, while the Netherlands correct course

[Communia Association] Back in January of this year, we noted how both the Netherlands and France (at that point the only Member States that had presented proposals to implement Article 17) had proposed selective implementations of Article 17 that ignored crucial user rights safeguards. A lot has happened since January, but yesterday both Member States took further steps in their national implementations. And this time the two Member States are moving in opposite directions: While the Dutch government has reacted to criticism from civil society and members of Parliament by fixing some of the most obvious shortcomings of its implementation law, the 2nd chamber of the French Parliament has adopted a law that gives the French government the power to implement Article 17 (and the rest of the provisions of the DSM directive) however it sees fit.

Action at the WTO is needed to accelerate research, development, manufacturing and supply of medical products to combat Covid-19: Proposal from India and South Africa

[Viviana Munoz Tellez] India and South Africa are calling for the WTO Members to agree to waive some of the obligations on protection and enforcement of patents and other intellectual property rights during the Covid-19 pandemic. The South Centre encourages all WTO Members to support the proposal in the upcoming TRIPS Council meeting on 10-11 October 2020 to forward a request to the General Council for the adoption of the decision text.

The TRIPS Council on 15-16 October should agree to extend the transition period that exempts Least Developed Countries from implementation of the WTO TRIPS Agreement

[Nirmalya Syam] The least developed country (LDC) members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have submitted a request to the upcoming session of the TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Council for an extension of the transition period available to LDC members under Article 66.1 of the TRIPS Agreement, for as long as they remain LDCs, and for an additional period of 12 years following their official graduation from the LDC category as determined by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.

Civil Society letter on the Article 17 implementation guidance

Earlier today 27 (update 16-09-2020: 30) civil society organisations sent a joint letter to Commissioner Breton summarising our responses to the Article 17 guidance consultation that closed last week... The letter expresses concerns that the proposed Article 17 guidance endorses the use of automated content blocking by online services even though it is clear that this will lead to the violation of fundamental rights. It also warns that implementations of Article 17 based on the proposed guidance will violate established principles of EU law.