Advocating for a world where intellectual
property law serves the public interest.

COVID-19 Challenges Copyright Law and Library Lending

Major publishing houses including HarperCollins and Penguin are suing the non-profit Internet Archive for its National Emergency Library, set up to provide access to books during the COVID-19 shutdown. The Authors Guild has supported the publishers’ copyright action.
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Statement of Sean Flynn, Principal Investigator, Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights, at the Second Session of the WIPO Conversation on IP and AI

I speak on behalf of a number of copyright academics that recently released a statement on Implementing User Rights for Research in the Field of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for Action at International Level... Many countries have rights to reproduce materials for research purposes that are broad enough to permit text and data mining to train AI and for other
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Contribution of piracy to the purchase of copyrighted contents

[Heesob Nam] Piracy is a political term used to label to every unauthorized use of copyrighted content as “illegal looting,” and to justify strengthened copyright enforcement . The copyright industries, including MPAA, BSA and IFPI, have estimated huge economic harms caused by piracy. Yet some literature show piracy having a positive effect on legal purchases of cultural products. Here is
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Who is Facilitating Fair Use in the time of a Pandemic?

[Mehtab Khan] The pandemic has put several pressures on the scope of fair use. Within a matter of weeks, millions of people lost physical access that they normally would have had through libraries and cultural institutions. Fair use was built to be flexible for circumstances like these. But now that users have changed the way that they are accessing copyrighted
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Ambivalence to Fair Use in U.S. Trade Policy

On June 16, 2020, President Ramaphosa of the Republic of South Africa referred the Copyright Amendment Bill (“CAB”), which had been awaiting his signature for more than 18 months, back to the Parliament. This action appears motivated at least in part by the U.S. Trade Representative (“USTR”)’s concerns about the CAB’s inclusion of a fair use right. This is the
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WEBINAR: The Global Health Impact – Extending Access to Essential Medicines

[Presentation and Discussion with Professor Nicole Hassoun, Binghamton University - July 15, 2020 | 5:00-6:00 pm EST] In Global Health Impact - Extending Access to Essential Medicines, Professor Nicole Hassoun proposes a novel approach to evaluate the impact of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical companies. The approach: Addresses questions and relies on methodology that is interdisciplinary in nature, covering fields of study
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