Copyright, Technology and Education for the Twenty-First Century: the United States-Colombia Free Trade Agreement
[Marcela Palacio Puerta] Technology has become essential for education. Many countries around the world have started to incorporate technology in the educational environment, thereby changing the educational process in order to give 21st-century learners the new abilities they need. Moreover, for developing countries, the use of technology in education represents an opportunity to solve salient problems of their educational systems. Nonetheless, countries have left aside the fact that copyright law governs how that technology can be effectively used in education. Click here for more.
Policing the Unstable Materialities of Digital-Media Piracy in Brazil
[Alex Dent] Around the world, antipiracy NGOs train police to recognize the unauthorized use of music and films and to publicly destroy illicit CDs and DVDs. For those who enforce laws governing intellectual property (IP), music and film piracy underscores how digital reproduction can be conceived of as forgetful, inconstant, and promiscuous. In Brazil, discourses about “cleaning” (limpeza) unite incitements to greater security, more active governance, and stricter IP enforcement. Click here for more.
Innovation and the Global Expansion of Intellectual Property Rights: Unfulfilled Promises
[Carlos Correa] The incorporation of intellectual property into trade agreements has not proven to bring about the promised benefits. The premises that have underpinned the global strengthening and expansion of intellectual property through such agreements – namely that the same standards of protection are suitable for countries with different levels of development and that innovation will be boosted – do not match the reality. Click here for more.
UN Panel Probes Patents and New Drugs
[Marcus Low, Business Day, Link] It is often argued that weakening patent monopolies on pharmaceuticals will lead to fewer new medicines being discovered. Whether this is indeed the case, and to what extent, is one of the key questions that must be addressed by a UN high-level panel convened to consider the “policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, global human rights law, trade rules and public health”. One of the difficulties faced by the panel, and by any policy maker, is the lack of transparency in relation to drug development. Firms generally disclose little detail about what they spend on research and development (R&D) for new medicines. Click here for the full op-ed in Business Day Live.
Leaked Impact Assessment on the Copyright Reform Recommends an Ancillary Copyright on Steroids
[Till Kreutzer] Yesterday, Statewatch leaked a draft version of the Impact Assessment (IA) report for the upcoming copyright reform. Concerning the area of publisher’s rights it leaves a devastating impression. The authors of the IA suggest introducing a new ancillary/neighbouring right for news publishers with a broad scope. And they make it sound like this would be an obvious and particularly good choice. Click here for more.
Public Consultation on Proposed Changes to Copyright Regime in Singapore
[Singapore Ministry of Law] Copyright is a form of intellectual property right which gives creators and producers of creative works the right to control specific uses of their works for a limited period of time. A good copyright regime balances between providing exclusive rights as an incentive to create and disseminate new creative works, and providing appropriate access to those works for the benefit of other creators and society at large. This balance encourages the creation and dissemination of knowledge and ultimately contributes to the larger drive to foster innovation. Click here for more.
The Impact of Open Licensing on the Early Reader Ecosystem
[Neil Butcher, Sarah Hoosen, Lisbeth Levey, and Derek Moore] Summary: Developing early literacy requires access to structured decodable texts and levelled readers, an array of supplementary reading materials (SRMs), and teachers trained in literacy development methods and teaching in language/s spoken in the school where they teach. As children acquire literacy most effectively in their mother tongue, this introduces a significant barrier for those who live in low-income countries and speak local languages for which there is not a viable publishing industry. Click here for more.
