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The principle of Access to Knowledge (A2K) has become a common reference point for a diverse set of agendas that all hope to realize technological and human potential by making knowledge more accessible. This book is a history of international copyright focused on principles of A2K and their proponents. Whilst debate and discussion so far has covered the perspectives of major western countries, the author's fresh approach to the topic considers emerging countries and NGOs, who have fought for the principles of A2K that are now fundamental to the system. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book connects copyright history to current problems, issues and events.
"This book is a result of an international and interdisciplinary research project known as the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project"--Acknowledgments.
Arguing that the translation of scientific and technical learning materials, and the publication of these translations in a timely and affordable manner, is crucially important in promoting access to scientific and technical knowledge in the developing world, this book examines the relationship between copyright law, translation and access to knowledge. Taking Sri Lanka as a case study in comparison with India and Bangladesh, it identifies factors that have contributed to the unfavourable relationship between copyright law and the timely and affordable translation of scientific and technical learning materials, such as colonisation, international copyright law, the trade interests of the developing economies and a lack of expertise and general lack of awareness surrounding copyright law in the developing world. Highlighting the need to reform international copyright law to promote the needs and interests of developing countries such as Sri Lanka, the book points to a possible way forward for developing countries to achieve this and to address the problem of striking a proper and delicate balance in their copyright laws between the protection of translation rights and the ability of people to access translations of copyright protected scientific and technical learning materials.
In International Copyright Law and Access to Education in Developing Countries: Exploring Multilateral Legal and Quasi-Legal Solutions, Susan Isiko Štrba demonstrates the challenge of access to printed copyrighted educational and research materials in developing countries and proposes institutional and normative solutions at national and international levels.
In a world where powerful intermediaries like Google and Facebook are de facto regulators of the communication of copyright-protected works, the democratization of access to content has both substantially expanded the availability of new markets and dramatically increased copyright infringements. Does this mean that the long-sought ideal of a "universal" copyright regulation, which would harmoniously combine effective protection of intellectual creations with public interest goals, is a lost cause? Taken together, the contributions to this insightful and thoroughly researched book suggest that despite the prevailing labyrinthine mosaic of divergent national responses to fragmentation at international level, the foundations of a universal approach can be found in the interaction of regional, national and international copyright law instruments when responding to current and emerging technologies. Emphasizing the adaptation of copyright law to the needs of the information society, this volume provides critical approaches by leading copyright scholars on whether pluralism or universalism is the appropriate path to follow for the development of international copyright law. The authors deal with such issues and topics as the following: the application of core copyright law principles worldwide; authorship, rights and exceptions in the international copyright acquis; Internet copyright enforcement; global collective management of copyright; copyright contracts; database and design rights; intermediary liability; the global reach of the U.S. Fair Use doctrine; World Intellectual Property Organization's role and strategy in international copyright lawmaking; and bilateral trade and investment agreements involving copyright. Specific evolutions and emerging trends in national and regional digital copyright laws are analyzed and assessed as they have developed in the European Union, the United States, Canada and Australia, as well as in several Asian and African countries. Throughout, attention is paid to compatibility with the Berne Convention, the perceived core of copyright law in the international copyright acquis, and the key question of the balancing of copyright law with fundamental rights from an international and comparative law perspective. As a comprehensive analysis of how core copyright law concepts and principles function in today's fragmented copyright legal system, this book has no peers. Its detailed treatment of numerous specific instruments and regimes, as well as its insightful approaches to the future of international copyright lawmaking, will prove of immeasurable value to lawyers, judges, policy makers, academics and researchers working in the field of copyright law.
Rules regulating access to knowledge are no longer the exclusive province of lawyers and policymakers and instead command the attention of anthropologists, economists, literary theorists, political scientists, artists, historians, and cultural critics. This burgeoning interdisciplinary interest in “intellectual property” has also expanded beyond the conventional categories of patent, copyright, and trademark to encompass a diverse array of topics ranging from traditional knowledge to international trade. Though recognition of the central role played by “knowledge economies” has increased, there is a special urgency associated with present-day inquiries into where rights to information come from, how they are justified, and the ways in which they are deployed. Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property, edited by Mario Biagioli, Peter Jaszi, and Martha Woodmansee, presents a range of diverse—and even conflicting—contemporary perspectives on intellectual property rights and the contested sources of authority associated with them. Examining fundamental concepts and challenging conventional narratives—including those centered around authorship, invention, and the public domain—this book provides a rich introduction to an important intersection of law, culture, and material production.
Explores the role of international legal scholars in the construction of legal knowledge, looking at examples from the cyberwar debate.
This book explores the interface between copyright and higher education, and their complementarities for the advancement of sustainable human development. In its broader sense, the concept of human development is noted as a set of freedoms and human capabilities that are essential for human flourishing. Adopting a rights-based human development and capability approach (HDCA), this book primarily examines the relevant policy and legal flexibilities under the existing international copyright system, and their implications for access to knowledge required for creative innovation and higher education. Exploring the interfaces between copyright and higher education, this book argues that an unbalanced and restrictive copyright system impedes reasonable access to knowledge, and stifles creative and learning freedoms or capabilities. In effect, a restrictive copyright system results in serious ramifications for sustainable human development. In view of its findings, this book underscores the need for rethinking copyright and reframing its relevant flexibilities as users' rights that are vital for promoting creative and learning capabilities towards sustainable human development. Further, the book emphasizes the complementarities between copyright and higher education, and their joint roles for sustainable human development. Given its application of the HDCA to explore ranges of interlinked topics, this book will be of a great interest to researchers across the fields of intellectual property law, innovation, global development, human rights, and higher education.
A movement emerges to challenge the tightening of intellectual property law around the world. At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online.
How students get the materials they need as opportunities for higher education expand but funding shrinks. From the top down, Shadow Libraries explores the institutions that shape the provision of educational materials, from the formal sector of universities and publishers to the broadly informal ones organized by faculty, copy shops, student unions, and students themselves. It looks at the history of policy battles over access to education in the post–World War II era and at the narrower versions that have played out in relation to research and textbooks, from library policies to book subsidies to, more recently, the several “open” publication models that have emerged in the higher education sector. From the bottom up, Shadow Libraries explores how, simply, students get the materials they need. It maps the ubiquitous practice of photocopying and what are—in many cases—the more marginal ones of buying books, visiting libraries, and downloading from unauthorized sources. It looks at the informal networks that emerge in many contexts to share materials, from face-to-face student networks to Facebook groups, and at the processes that lead to the consolidation of some of those efforts into more organized archives that circulate offline and sometimes online— the shadow libraries of the title. If Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub is the largest of these efforts to date, the more characteristic part of her story is the prologue: the personal struggle to participate in global scientific and educational communities, and the recourse to a wide array of ad hoc strategies and networks when formal, authorized means are lacking. If Elbakyan's story has struck a chord, it is in part because it brings this contradiction in the academic project into sharp relief—universalist in principle and unequal in practice. Shadow Libraries is a study of that tension in the digital era. Contributors Balázs Bodó, Laura Czerniewicz, Miroslaw Filiciak, Mariana Fossatti, Jorge Gemetto, Eve Gray, Evelin Heidel, Joe Karaganis, Lawrence Liang, Pedro Mizukami, Jhessica Reia, Alek Tarkowski