Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Michael Palmedo recently presented PIJIP’s empirical research on copyright exceptions for Text and Data Mining at the annual conference of the Society for the Economic Research of Copyright Issues.

PIJIP’s review of copyright exceptions that allow researchers to reproduce works without authorization in order to conduct text and datamining operations – and sometimes to share their reproductions with other researchers – was first published in a 2020 PIJIP research paper. The initial review analyzed laws as they stood in 2020. Since then, Palmedo has worked with LLM students at PIJIP to trace changes to these laws over a 22 year period. 

Earlier this summer, the review was published in the working paper Measuring Change in Copyright Exceptions for Text and Data Mining, by Michael Palmedo, Momina Imran, Miguel Alvarenga, Luca Schirru, and Duc Le.

Abstract:

Copyright exceptions for researchers are under debate at the World Intellectual Property Organization and within domestic governments, yet empirical research in this area is rare. In this early working paper, we aim to add to this nascent body of research. We expand PIJIP’s previous review and classification of copyright exceptions in WIPO Members’ laws by tracing changes in the laws over time. We find that most countries have copyright exceptions allowing some unauthorized uses for research purposes. However, most countries’ exceptions restrict some mix of the users, uses, or types of works that are allowed. High-income countries tend to be more permissive of researcher’s unauthorized uses, than countries in other income groups, and their laws have grown slightly more permissive over the past two decades. Former British colonies with a history of fair dealing tend to be more permissive than other countries, but they are becoming less permissive on average as they amended their laws.

Copyright exceptions for researchers - Video

A short film by Ben Cashdan begins with Michael Palmedo describing PIJIP’s data. Then University of Barcelona Professor Joan-Josep Vallbé describe econometric tests using the data to show that stronger exceptions for text and data mining are associated with more TDM-related research at the country level.