The Rise of the Robo Notice
[Joe Karaganis] … As automated systems became common, the number of takedown requests increased dramatically. For some online services, the numbers of complaints went from dozens or hundreds per year to hundreds of thousands or millions. In 2009, Google’s search service received less than 100 takedown requests. In 2014, it received 345 million requests. Although Google is the extreme outlier, other services—especially those in the copyright ‘hot zones’ around search, storage, and social media—saw order-of-magnitude increases. Click here for more.
Sharing Research Data and Intellectual Property Law: A Primer
[Michael Carroll] Sharing research data by depositing it in connection with a published article or otherwise making data publicly available sometimes raises intellectual property questions in the minds of depositing researchers, their employers, their funders, and other researchers who seek to reuse research data. In this context or in the drafting of data management plans, common questions are (1) what are the legal rights in data; (2) who has these rights; and (3) how does one with these rights use them to share data in a way that permits or encourages productive downstream uses? Leaving to the side privacy and national security laws that regulate sharing certain types of data, this Perspective explains how to work through the general intellectual property and contractual issues for all research data. Click here for more.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Copyright Law, the Creative Industries, and Internet Freedom
[Matthew Rimmer] The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a highly secretive trade agreement being negotiated between the US and eleven Pacific Rim countries, including Australia. Having obtained a fast-track authority from the United States Congress, US President Barack Obama is keen to finalise the deal. However, he was unable to achieve a resolution of the deal at recent talks in Hawaii on the TPP. A number of chapters of the TPP will affect the creative artists, cultural industries and internet freedom – including the intellectual property chapter, the investment chapter, and the electronic commerce chapter. Click here for more.
South Africa Releases Cybercrimes & Cybersecurity Bill for Comment: Bill Includes Penalties for Online Infringement
[Mike Palmedo] The South African government has introduced a draft Cybercrimes & Cybersecurity Bill for public comment. The Bill states that anyone who “sells, offers for download, distributes, or otherwise makes available” copyrighted works “by means of a computer network or an electronic communications network” will be guilty of an offense. Penalties include fines or up to three years imprisonment. Click here for more.
Anatomy of a Copyright Coup: Jamaica’s Public Domain Plundered
[Jeremy Malcolm] A bill extending the term of copyright by an additional 45 years—almost doubling it, in the case of corporate and government works—sailed through the Jamaican Senate on June 26, after having passed the House of Representatives on June 9. The copyright term in Jamaica is now 95 years from the death of the author, or 95 years from publication for government and corporate works. This makes it the third-longest copyright term in the world, after Mexico and Côte d’Ivoire respectively with 100 and 99 years from the death of the author. Click here for more.
