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

Monopolising Trash: The Critical Analysis of Upcycling under Finnish and EU Copyright Law

[Péter Mezei and Heidi Härkönen] Abstract: Exhaustion is a fundamental doctrine of copyright law, allowing for the resale of lawfully acquired copies of protected subject matter without prior authorization and payment to the rightholder. Following the debates on parallel importation, freedom of movement of goods, property rights v. copyright, and, most recently, resale of digital files, it is time to
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The Italian Implementation of the New EU Text and Data Mining Exceptions

[Deborah De Angelis] The legislative decree implementing the CDSM Directive in Italy was adopted on November 8th, 2021, and published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale on November 27th. It came into force on December 12th, 2021, amending the Italian Copyright Law. This blog post analyses the implementation of the copyright exceptions for Text and Data Mining, which is defined in the
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WHO Proposed Instrument on Pandemics: the Conceptual Zero Draft Needs Substantial Improvement to Address Global Public Health Needs

[South Centre] We welcome the discussions in the WHO on a new instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. While we appreciate the preparation and sharing with WHO members of the Conceptual Zero Draft (hereinafter ‘the Draft’), we note that more work is needed to address the insufficiency of the tools at the disposal of the WHO that became
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Examples of Text and Data Mining Research Using Copyrighted Materials

[Sean Flynn and Lokesh Vyas] Last week, Science Magazine published a joint academic opinion by leading copyright scholars from around the world calling for copyright reform to enable text and data mining (TDM) research. The opinion calls for all countries to evaluate their laws, and for international institutions to guide them, so that text and data mining research can take
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The Role of Copyright Law in Text and Data Mining Research

Natasha Karanja & Chebet Koros] When evaluating the copyright ecosystem within the African continent, a perceived imbalance is identified, where researchers face barriers in accessing materials protected by copyright.1 It has been claimed that African copyright regimes do not accommodate public interests because they do not support the research of various stakeholders, specifically within the new era of Artificial Intelligence
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Access Shrugged: The Decline of the Copyleft and the Rise of Utilitarian Openness

[Aram Sinnreich, Patricia Aufderheide, Maggie Clifford and Saif Shahin] Abstract: This article maps patterns of interest in key terms associated with copyright and online culture in the US context. Using exploratory factor analysis of data from Google Trends, authors examined patterns in keyword searches between 2004 and 2019... These data show empirically that the public curiosity about alternatives to strict
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