Day November 19, 2021

The Complexity Dialectic: A 2021 Update

[Jonathan Band] In March 2015, I published The Complexity Dialectic: A Case Study From Copyright Law, where I argued that the nature of the U.S. political system encourages increasingly complex regulatory frameworks, which benefit those with more resources to navigate those frameworks. I used the triennial rulemaking under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) as a case study to demonstrate this point. I showed that the rule issued by the Librarian of Congress (upon the recommendation of the Copyright Office) had grown increasingly complex. The number of words in the exemptions increased from 35 words for two exempted classes of works in the 2000 rulemaking cycle to 1,172 words for five exempted classes in the 2013 cycle. The most recent set of exemptions continues this trend.

Access to COVID-19 Vaccines in High-, Middle-, and Low-Income Countries Hosting Clinical Trials

[Reshma Ramachandran, Joseph S. Ross, and Jennifer E. Miller] The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the rapid development of multiple vaccines, tested in clinical trials located in several countries. Low- and middle-income countries have experienced significant delays in vaccine access despite initiatives aiming to ensure fair distribution, such as COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX). Because pharmaceuticals do not receive consistent and timely authorization for use in lower-income countries where they are tested, we examined authorization and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the countries where they were tested.