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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 external link
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. We found that while richer regions are the most intensive users of shadow libraries, poorer regions face structural limitations that prevent them from fully capitalizing on freely accessible knowledge. We discuss these findings in the wider context of open access publishing, and point out that open access knowledge, if not met with proper knowledge absorption infrastructures, has limited usefulness in addressing knowledge access and production inequalities.
Links
Auteursrecht, frontpage, Internet, knowledge gap, libraries, piraterij
RIS
Bibtex
Panta rhei: A European Perspective on Ensuring a High-Level of Protection of Digital Human Rights in a World in Which Everything Flows external link
Trends and Developments in Artificial Intelligence: Challenges to the Intellectual Property Rights Framework: Final Report external link
Abstract
This report examines copyright and patent protection in Europe for AI-assisted outputs in general and in three priority domains: science (in particular, meteorology), media (journalism), and pharmaceutical research. It comprises an assessment of the state of the art of uses of AI in the three focus areas, and a legal analysis of how IP laws currently apply to AI-assisted creative and innovative outputs. The report concludes that the current state of the art in AI does not require or justify immediate substantive changes in copyright and patent law in Europe. The existing concepts of copyright and patent law are sufficiently abstract and flexible to meet the current challenges from AI. In addition, related rights regimes potentially extend to ‘authorless’ AI productions in a variety of sectors, and the sui generis database right may offer protection to AI-produced databases resulting from substantial investment. However, taking into account the practical implications of AI technologies, the report identifies specific avenues for future legal reform (if justified by empirical evidence), offers recommendations for improvements in the application of existing rules (e.g. via guidelines), and highlights the need to study the role of alternative IP regimes to protect AI-assisted outputs, such as trade secret protection, unfair competition and contract law.
Artificial intelligence, frontpage, Intellectuele eigendom
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Bibtex
Intermediary Liability and Trade Mark Infringement – Proliferation of Filter Obligations in Civil Law Jurisdictions? external link
Abstract
The erosion of the safe harbour for hosting in the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM Directive) leads to a remarkable climate change in the field of EU copyright law and the civil law jurisdictions of continental EU Member States. Inevitably, it raises the question of potential repercussions on the safe harbour for hosting and filtering standards in trademark cases. Even though online marketplaces are explicitly exempted from the new copyright rules and the CDSM Directive is not intended to neutralize the safe harbour for hosting in trademark cases, the adoption of a more restrictive approach in copyright law may quicken the appetite of trademark proprietors for similar measures in trademark law.
The extension of the new copyright approach to trademark cases, however, is unlikely to yield satisfactory results.Due to the different conceptual contours of trademark rights, a system mimicking the filtering obligations following from the CDSM Directive would give trademark proprietors excessive control over the use of their trademarks in the digital environment. Such an overbroad system of automated, algorithmic filtering would encroach upon the fundamental guarantee of freedom of expression and freedom of competition. It is likely to have a chilling effect on legitimate descriptive use of trademarks, comparative advertising, advertising by resellers, information about alternative offers in the marketplace, and use criticizing or commenting upon trademarked products.
As a result, consumers would receive less diverse information on goods and services and the free movement of goods and services in the internal market would be curtailed. The reliability of the internet as an independent source of trademark-related information would be put at risk. The analysis, thus, leads to the insight that a proliferation of the new filtering obligations in copyright law is undesirable and should be avoided.
algorithmic enforcement, confusion, Content moderation, descriptive use, dilution, exhaustion of trademark rights, filtering obligations, free movement of goods and services, freedom of commercial expression, freedom of competition, frontpage, market transparency, Merkenrecht, parallel imports, platform economy
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Signs Eligible for Trademark Protection – Dysfunctional Incentives and a Functionality Dilemma in the EU external link
Abstract
In the European Union (EU), the criteria for determining a sign’s eligibility for trademark protection are harmonized to a large extent. On the one hand, the trademark legislation and office practices in EU Member States have to keep within the harmonized legal framework set forth in the EU Trade Mark Directive (TMD). On the other hand, the European Union Trade Mark Regulation (EUTMR) provides for a set of eligibility criteria that apply to European Union Trade Marks (EUTM) with equal effect throughout the EU territory. As the rules in the Regulation are in line with those in the Directive, the two legislative instruments constitute a robust body of harmonized norms informing the decision on the registration of a sign as a trademark. The harmonizing effect is enhanced by the fact that national courts have to refer questions relating to the application and interpretation of eligibility criteria to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
As in other regions of the world, the criteria applied to determine eligibility for trademark protection are quite flexible in the EU. The open-ended definition of protectable subject matter leaves room for the extension of trademark protection to non-traditional types of marks, such as shape, sound and colour marks. Trademark offices applying EU trademark law have also accepted, for instance, abstract colours and colour combinations, motion and multimedia marks, melodies and sounds, taste marks, hologram marks and position marks.
The analysis of the trend to register non-traditional marks in the EU outlines the legal framework which the CJEU developed to assess the eligibility of non-traditional types of source identifiers for trademark protection. On this basis, it discusses the objective to safeguard freedom of competition and the legal instruments which the CJEU employs for this purpose: the requirement of providing evidence of the acquisition of distinctive character through use in trade and the categorical exclusion of functional signs from trademark protection. Drawing conclusions, it will become apparent that the basic requirement of distinctive character plays an ambiguous role in the regulation of access to trademark protection for non-traditional marks. It is both an obstacle to trademark protection and an incentive for enhanced investment in non-traditional types of marks.
depletion theory, distinctive character, eu-recht, freedom of competition, frontpage, functionality doctrine, harmonization in the EU, Merkenrecht, need to keep free, non-traditional types of marks, proof of acquired distinctive character, retroactive effect, secondary meaning, Trademark law, trademark law reform
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CIPIL Evening Webinar: ‘Article 17 and the New EU Rules on Content-Sharing Platforms’ external link
Abstract
This presentation addresses the hottest topic in EU copyright law and policy: Article 17 of the new Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM) Directive (2019/790). The CDSM Directive is the culmination of a controversial political and legislative process at EU level. None of its provisions has caused greater debate than Article 17, which introduces a new liability regime for "online content-sharing service providers". These include most user-generated content platforms hosting copyright-protected content accessed daily by millions of individuals in the EU and across the globe. Even before the CDSM Directive is implemented into national law, the issues surrounding Article 17 have already spilled out to the policy and judicial arenas. At the policy level, the debates taking place in a number of Commission-led Stakeholder Dialogues have laid bare many of the unresolved challenges ahead for national legislators and courts. At the judicial level, the Polish government has filed an action for annulment with the CJEU under Article 263 TFEU, focusing on the most problematic aspects of Article 17. This presentation will first place Article 17 into its broader EU policy context of the discussion on the responsibilities of online platforms – from the agenda on "Tackling Illegal Content Online" to the Digital Services Act – and the narrow copyright context regarding the liability of intermediary platforms for third-party content they host. This will be followed by an explanation of the complex mechanics of Article 17 and an identification of some of its fundamental problems. Finally, some tentative proposals will be advanced for how to begin to address such problems, focusing on the core issues of licensing mechanisms and fundamental rights safeguards.
Art. 17 CDSM Directive, Auteursrecht, eu-recht, frontpage, Platforms
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News Recommenders and Cooperative Explainability: Confronting the contextual complexity in AI explanations external link
CJEU hearing in the Polish challenge to Article 17: Not even the supporters of the provision agree on how it should work external link
WODC-onderzoek: Voorziening voor verzoeken tot snelle verwijdering van onrechtmatige online content external link
Abstract
Dit onderzoek is uitgegeven als onderdeel van het speerpunt van de Minister voor Rechtsbescherming om de positie van slachtoffers van onrechtmatige uitingen op het internet te verbeteren. Aanleiding is dat het voor mensen als te moeilijk ervaren wordt om onrechtmatige online content snel verwijderd te krijgen. Dit rapport biedt inzicht in de juridische en praktische haalbaarheid van een voorziening voor de verwijdering van onrechtmatige online content die mensen persoonlijk raakt. Onrechtmatige content is informatie, door mensen op het internet geplaatst, die in strijd is met het recht, vanwege de schadelijke gevolgen ervan en/of omdat de belangen van anderen daardoor op ernstige wijze worden aangetast. Hierbij moet, bijvoorbeeld, gedacht worden aan bedreigingen, privacy-inbreuken of wraakporno. Het doel van de onderzochte voorziening is om mensen in staat te stellen deze onrechtmatige online content zo snel mogelijk te verwijderen. Het onderzoek focust op onrechtmatige online content die mensen in hun persoon raakt en daarmee onder het recht op privéleven uit artikel 8 Europees Verdrag voor de Rechten van de Mens (“EVRM”) valt.
Art. 8 EVRM, frontpage, Informatierecht, onrechtmatige online content, Privacy