Day June 10, 2019

What happens when books enter the public domain? Testing copyright’s underuse hypothesis across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada

[Rebecca Giblin] Abstract: The United States (‘US’) extended most copyright terms by 20 years in 1998, and has since exported that extension via ‘free trade’ agreements to countries including Australia and Canada. A key justification for the longer term was the claim that exclusive rights are necessary to encourage publishers to invest in making older works available — and that, unless such rights were granted, they would go underused. This study empirically tests this ‘underuse hypothesis’ by investigating the relative availability of ebooks to public libraries across Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada.

WHO: Countries Raise Concerns about Access to Affordable Drug-Resistant TB Treatment

[Third World Network] Member states participating in the 72nd World Health Assembly (WHA) renewed their commitment to end tuberculosis (TB) while expressing serious concerns about drug-resistant TB (DR-TB), the treatment of which is presently costly and beyond the reach of many national TB programmes… Bedaquiline and delamanid are extensively patented in countries with a high TB burden such as China, India, Indonesia etc, blocking entry of generic competition and more affordable sources of the treatment. Members states and civil society interventions during the WHA reflected the challenges they face in this regard