Category Domestic Policy

EIFL’s Review of ‘Fairness’ in Partner Countries’ Copyright Laws

[Teresa Hackett] In celebration of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, EIFL has surveyed copyright laws in partner countries that reflect the concept of ‘fairness’ in the use of copyright protected material. Language on the fairness of permitted uses for purposes such as education, research, criticism or review can be found in the laws of over half of EIFL’s partner countries across 19 countries in Africa, Europe and Asia-Pacific, highlighting the important role of equity in access to information.

Intellectual Property Use in Middle Income Countries: The Case of Chile

Authors: Carsten Fink, Bronwyn Hall and Christian Helmers. Abstract: We analyze the use of intellectual property (IP) by firms in Chile over the decade 1995-2005 as the then middle-income country experienced rapid economic growth of 4.7 percent per year. We use a novel dataset that contains a combination of detailed firm-level information from the annual manufacturing census, information on firms’ innovative activities from Chile’s innovation surveys, and firms’ patent, industrial design, and trademark filings with the Chilean IP office.

Debunking the Fair Use vs. Fair Dealing Myth: Have We Had Fair Use All Along?

[Ariel Katz] According to conventional wisdom, a fundamental difference exists between the American fair use doctrine and the Canadian (or Commonwealth) fair dealing doctrine: while American fair use can apply potentially to any purpose, Canadian fair dealing could only apply to those purposes enumerated in the statute. Accordingly, fair dealing cannot apply to dealings for other purposes even if they would otherwise be fair. This conventional wisdom is false.

European Educators Ask for a Better Copyright

[Electronic Information for Libraries] EIFL joins 53 organizations representing teachers, students, vocational trainers, researchers, scientists, librarians, archivists and museum professionals calling on European legislators for a copyright framework that properly facilitates modern, innovative education in Europe. The joint letter, sent to members of the European Parliament by COMMUNIA, an international association that advocates for copyright reform in education, highlights four key problems with the current proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM).

Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement

[Daniel Nazer] Rejecting years of settled precedent, a federal court in New York has ruled [PDF] that you could infringe copyright simply by embedding a tweet in a web page. Even worse, the logic of the ruling applies to all in-line linking, not just embedding tweets. If adopted by other courts, this legally and technically misguided decision would threaten millions of ordinary Internet users with infringement liability.

How Copyright Law Is Holding Back Australian Creators

[Kylie Pappalardo and Karnika Bansal] Australian creators struggle to understand copyright law and how to manage it for their own projects. Indeed, a new study has found copyright law can act as a deterrent to creation, rather than an incentive for it. Interviews with 29 Australian creators, including documentary filmmakers, writers, musicians and visual artists, sought to understand how they reuse existing content to create. It considered issues such as whether permission (“licences”) had been sought to reuse copyrighted content; the amount of time and cost involved in obtaining such permissions; and a creator’s recourse if permission was either denied or too expensive to obtain.

Licenses: We Are Past Copyright

[Teresa Nobre] We have been arguing for quite sometime now that handing out the power to define the scope of users rights to right holders – in the form of license agreements that they can (almost unilateral) draft and frame as they wish – is bad. Really bad: licenses fragment the legal framework that mandatory exceptions try to harmonize; licenses contain abusive terms or impose obligations on users that are not foreseen in the laws; and licenses have a huge impact on national budgets. Unfortunately, this message has not come through to all, or not everyone understands what we are saying, or worse right holders have done a nice job in convincing lawmakers that’s the right way to go.

EIFL RESPONDS TO IRISH MARRAKESH CONSULTATION

[Electronic Information for Libraries] In December 2017, the Irish government issued a public consultation on transposition into national law of European Union (EU) Directive 2017/1564 implementing the Marrakesh Treaty for persons with print disabilities. Irish transposition of the Directive could serve as a model not only for other EU member states, but also for EU candidate countries and potential candidates.

New Policy Paper on the 2017 Review of Public Sector Information Directive

[Communia Association] Today COMMUNIA published a policy paper on the 2017 review of the Directive on Public Sector Information (PSI Directive). The Directive first came into effect in 2003, and was amended in 2013 to clarify that 1) PSI should be presumed to be “reusable by default,” 2) museums, archives, and libraries were subject to the Directive provision, 3) acquisition fees were limited to marginal costs of reproduction, and 4) documents were to be made available for reuse using open standards and machine readable formats.

Australian Copyright Law Reform Update: A Lot to Celebrate and a Lot to Look Forward To

2017 was the year that Copyright was a gift that kept on giving in Australia as a raft of new copyright laws and regulations were finally passed after many years of dogged advocacy by the Australian Education sector. As we all know Copyright law reform takes a very long time, and the process can be disheartening and toxic but with armed with compelling evidence and arguments and tenacity, it is possible to achieve great results. This is important to keep in mind in the EU and other jurisdictions currently undergoing copyright law reform reviews. See below for more details in relation to the recent 2017 changes and what copyright law reform has in store for 2018.

Captured Copyright Law

A new book by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, The Captured Economy, contains important insights on how the U.S. copyright system impedes economic growth and promotes income inequality in America. Lindsey, vice president of the Niskanen Center, describes himself as a libertarian. Teles, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, describes himself as a liberal. Their basic thesis is that powerful corporations and professionals use government regulation to eliminate competition and increase their wealth, thereby promoting inequality and slowing economic growth. Intellectual property law is one of their case studies.

Educators Ask for a Better Copyright

[Communia Association] Today COMMUNIA sent a joint letter to all MEPs working on copyright reform. The letter is an urgent request to improve the education exception in the proposal for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. It is supported by 35 organisations representing schools, libraries, universities and non-formal education, and also individual educators and information specialists.