Author: Papers

Australian Copyright Law Impedes the Development of Artificial Intelligence: What Are the Options?

Posted by | Jan 2, 2021 | , ,

[Rita Matulionyte] Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology that has a huge potential in contributing to the Australian economy and addressing economic and social problems in society. However, Australian copyright laws are likely to impede the development of AI, and machine learning in particular, by requiring authorization every time when copyrighted content is used in machine learning processes.

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Copyright and Economic Viability: Evidence from the Music Industry

Posted by | Dec 18, 2020 | ,

[Kristelia Garcia, James Hicks and Justin McCrary] Abstract: Copyright provides a long term of legal excludability, ostensibly to encourage the production of new creative works. How long this term should last, and the extent to which current law aligns with the economic incentives of copyright owners, has been the subject of vigorous theoretical debate. We investigate the economic viability of content in a major creative industry—commercial music—using a novel longitudinal dataset of weekly sales and streaming counts. We find that the typical sound recording has an extremely short commercial half-life—on the order of months, rather than years or decades—but also see evidence that subscription streaming services extend the period of economic viability.

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One product, many patents: Imperfect intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical industry

Posted by | Dec 13, 2020 | ,

[Charu N. Gupta] Abstract: Economists’ standard notion of intellectual property rights considers a single patent per product, with a clearly defined scope, certain enforcement, and a fixed term of monopoly protection. Yet common across industries are “imperfect” intellectual property rights: More than one patent may cover a single product, with the scope and enforcement of each uncertain, contributing to an indeterminate period of monopoly protection. Using data on the pharmaceutical industry, I systematically document the presence of imperfect intellectual property rights and provide the first evidence on the extent to which they impact competition.

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Can scholarly pirate libraries bridge the knowledge access gap? An empirical study on the structural conditions of book piracy in global and European academia.

Posted by | Dec 11, 2020 |

[Balázs Bodó, Dániel Antal, and Zoltán Puha] Abstract: Library Genesis is one of the oldest and largest illegal scholarly book collections online. Without the authorization of copyright holders, this shadow library hosts and makes more than 2 million scholarly publications, monographs, and textbooks available. This paper analyzes a set of weblogs of one of the Library Genesis mirrors, provided to us by one of the service’s administrators. We reconstruct the social and economic factors that drive the global and European demand for illicit scholarly literature. In particular, we test if lower income regions can compensate for the shortcomings in legal access infrastructures by more intensive use of illicit open resources.

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Patent-Related Actions Taken in WTO Members in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted by | Nov 23, 2020 |

[Xiaoping We and Bassam Peter Khazin] Abstract: … This working paper provides an overview of the patent landscape of medical treatments and technologies related to COVID-19, and of the patent status of two investigational medical treatments: remdesivir and lopinavir/ritonavir. It then presents various patent-related actions taken by legislators, policymakers, industry sectors, and civil society organizations in WTO Members since the outbreak. Furthermore, it elaborates on patent-related policy options provided by the TRIPS Agreement, and WTO Members’ national implementation and utilization of these options in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Exceptions as users’ rights in EU copyright law

Posted by | Nov 16, 2020 | ,

[Maurizio Borghi] Abstract: The paper explores possible ways of construing copyright exceptions as users’ rights within the EU legal framework. It discusses some basic principles on the legal nature of exceptions, and then focuses more specifically on EU law and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The paper shows that the CJEU has moved away from a strict interpretation of exceptions as “derogations” to general principles of copyright protection, towards recognition of exceptions as bearing autonomous legal status.

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Comparative Study on Copyright Exception for Teaching Purposes: Australia, Malaysia and the United Kingdom

Posted by | Nov 12, 2020 | ,

[Ratnaria Wahid & Ida Madieha Abdul Ghani AzmiAbstract] While education is considered a basic human right, the copyright system seems to hamper public access to information and knowledge. This is especially so when information that largely comes from developed countries are used as commodities that have to be bought by developing countries. This paper compares the international and national laws in Malaysia, United Kingdom and Australia on the copyright exceptions to materials used for teaching purposes.

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Unscrewing the Future: The Right to Repair and Circumvention of Software TPMs in the EU

Posted by | Nov 9, 2020 | ,

[Anthony Rosborough] Abstract: This analysis examines the impact of software technological protection measures (“TPMs”) in the European Union which inhibit the repair and maintenance of products. Using John Deere tractors as a case study, this analysis addresses the growing number of products which incorporate computerization and TPM-protected software into their design and function. In utilizing software integration and TPMs, many product designs now allow manufacturers to retain considerable control over the manner of repair and choice of technician. In response, consumers and lawmakers are calling for legal reforms to make self-repair and servicing easier. Both the competition law and moral implications of this residual control held by manufacturers are examined in this analysis.

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The Odyssey of the Prohibition on General Monitoring Obligations on the Way to the Digital Services Act: Between Article 15 of the E-Commerce Directive and Article 17 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market

Posted by | Nov 6, 2020 |

[Martin Senftleben and Christina Angelopoulos] Abstract: EU law provides explicitly that intermediaries may not be obliged to monitor their service in a general manner in order to detect and prevent the illegal activity of their users. However, a misunderstanding of the difference between monitoring specific content and monitoring FOR specific content is a recurrent theme in the debate on intermediary liability and a central driver of the controversy surrounding it.

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European Copyright and Human Rights in the Digital Sphere

Posted by | Oct 30, 2020 | ,

[Christina Angelopoulos] Abstract: For a long time, copyright and human rights took little account of each other. The emergence of digital technology, however, has forced a more intimate interaction. This interaction raises questions about both the nature of copyright and its relationship with other interests: is copyright a human right and, if so, how can clashes with other human rights be resolved? In the European context, the answer to the first question has so far been ‘yes’, raising the stakes as to the second. Both the CJEU and ECtHR have approached the matter as one requiring a ‘balance’.

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A Taxonomy of Training Data: Disentangling the Mismatched Rights, Remedies, and Rationales for Restricting Machine Learning

Posted by | Oct 26, 2020 | , ,

[Benjamin Sobel] Abstract: This chapter addresses a crucial problem in artificial intelligence: many applications of machine learning depend on unauthorized uses of copyrighted data. Scholars and lawmakers often articulate this problem as a deficiency in copyright’s exceptions and limitations, reasoning that legal uncertainties surrounding today’s AI stem from the lack of a clear exception or limitation, and that such an exception or limitation could resolve the current predicament. In fact, the current predicament is a product of two systemic features of the copyright regime — the absence of formalities and the low threshold of copyright-able originality — combined with a technological environment that turns routine activities into acts of authorship. Equilibrating the economy for human expression in the AI age requires a solution that focuses not only on exceptions to existing copyrights, but also on the aforementioned doctrinal features that determine the ownership and scope of copyright entitlements at their inception.

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Conflicting Interests, Competing Perspectives and Policy Incoherence: Covid-19 Highlights the Significance of the UN High-Level Panel Report on Access to Medicines

Posted by | Oct 23, 2020 | , , ,

[Muhammad Abbas] … The UN High-Level Panel Report on Access to Medicines is a great help in identifying and articulating the nature of the public policy problems faced by countries in response to COVID-19. After analysing the Report and its key recommendations, this paper evaluates the diverging responses to the Report which clearly highlight the conflicting interests of stakeholders. This article concludes that WTO Member States need to revive the spirit of the Doha Declaration which was arguably the best multilateral effort to accommodate the conflicting interests.

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Implementing User Rights for Research in the Field of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for International Action

Posted by | Oct 16, 2020 | ,

[Sean Flynn, Christophe Geiger, João Quintais, Thomas Margoni, Matthew Sag, Lucie Guibault and Michael W. Carroll.] Abstract: Last year, before the onset of a global pandemic highlighted the critical and urgent need for technology-enabled scientific research, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) launched an inquiry into issues at the intersection of intellectual property (IP) and artificial intelligence (AI). We contributed comments to that inquiry, with a focus on the application of copyright to the use of text and data mining (TDM) technology. This article describes some of the most salient points of our submission and concludes by stressing the need for international leadership on this important topic. WIPO could help fill the current gap on international leadership, including by providing guidance on the diverse mechanisms that countries may use to authorize TDM research and serving as a forum for the adoption of rules permitting cross-border TDM projects.

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How to License Article 17? Exploring the Implementation Options for the New EU Rules on Content-Sharing Platforms

Posted by | Oct 6, 2020 | , ,

[Martin Husovec and João Quintais] Abstract: Article 17 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive is a major Internet policy experiment of our decade. The provision fundamentally changes copyright regulation of certain digital platforms. However, the precise nature of art. 17 is far from clear. How does it fit the existing structure of EU copyright law and doctrine? How can the Member States implement it? These are the questions at the heart of this article.

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The Copyright Tax

Posted by | Oct 5, 2020 | ,

[Glynn Lunney] Abstract: In 1841, Lord Babington described copyright “as a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers.” In this article, I take that description literally. Treating copyright as a tax-and-subsidy system, I use a novel data set to estimate the amount of the copyright tax and to demonstrate that the copyright tax has increased significantly for books and music with the transition from analog to digital distribution. I then explore who pays it. Finally, I use the rise-and-fall of the sound recording copyright as a natural experiment to explore what, if anything, taxpayers have received in return for paying their copyright taxes.

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The New Related Right for Press Publishers: What Way Forward?

Posted by | Sep 24, 2020 | ,

[Silvia Scalzini] Abstract: Following the entry into force of Directive 2019/790/EU, a new related right has been added to the EU catalogue (Article 15). Indeed, a new right has been introduced in favour of press publishers for the reproduction and making available to the public of press publications in respect of online uses by information society service providers. The main aim of the EU reform is to support the sustainability of the press by creating a level playing field between digital services and press publishers, where the latter may find a way to recoup a return on their investments. This objective is clearly reflected in the construction of the right, which is inherently unbalanced regarding opposing rights and interests, thus risking to (further) fragmenting the consistency of EU copyright and related rights system.

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Digital Piracy and the Perception of Price Fairness: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Posted by | Sep 21, 2020 | ,

[Anna Kukla-Gryz, Joanna Tyrowicz & Michał Krawczyk] Abstract: We study a relationship between perceived price fairness and digital piracy. In a large-scale field experiment on customers of a leading ebook store, we employ the Bayesian truth serum to elicit the information on acquiring books from unauthorized sources (often referred to as digital piracy). We provide empirical evidence in support of the conjecture that willingness to “pirate” is associated with having experienced subjective overpricing. We propose and verify the relevance of two mechanisms behind this link: reactance theory and moral cleansing/licensing. The results indicate that pricing policy perceived as fair may reduce the scope for digital piracy.

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A New Trend in Trade Agreements: Ensuring Access to Cancer Drugs

Posted by | Sep 15, 2020 | , , ,

[Maria Fabiana Jorge] Abstract: … prices are clearly out of reach for most patients who will need them increasingly more to stay alive. While competition is critical to ensure lower drug prices, we have seen a number of strategies, including through trade agreements, to prevent competition and extend monopolies over these drugs and their very high drug prices. It is no accident that the exclusivity granted to biologic drugs has been one of the most conflictive provisions in recent trade agreements such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Nevertheless a new trend in trade agreements started in 2007 when U.S. Members of Congress pushed back against the interests of powerful economic groups seeking longer monopolies for drugs.

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Re-thinking Global and Local Manufacturing of Medical Products After COVID-19

Posted by | Sep 14, 2020 | ,

[Germán Velásquez] The unprecedented global health crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic since the first quarter of 2020 has reopened the now-urgent discussion about the role of local pharmaceutical production in addressing the health needs in developing countries. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the interdependencies in the global production of pharmaceuticals—no country is self-sufficient.

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Influence of Copyright Exceptions and Limitations on Access to Information in Kenya, Ghana and Uganda Libraries

Posted by | Aug 31, 2020 |

[Magdaline Wanjiru Mungai, Selikem Sebuava Dorvlo, Asaph Nuwagirya, and Marlene Holmner] Abstract: Copyright exceptions promote access to information by users without breaching copyright. This research paper reviews copyright exceptions in Kenya, Ghana and Uganda and how they influence access to information in libraries. Objectives were to find out the implications of copyright exceptions in Kenya, Ghana and Uganda; advantages and disadvantages of copyright exceptions for libraries; and recommend best practices of copyright exceptions.

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