Lea Bishop

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Ending Childhood Book Hunger

Professor Lea Bishop is a dedicated scholar-advocate for promoting the human right to read. Her work encompasses both conceptual and pragmatic approaches to advancing this right. Conceptually, she has developed a comprehensive theory of the right to science and culture, which has gained recognition and adoption within the United Nations. By establishing the theoretical foundation, she has helped shape global discussions and policies surrounding the importance of access to knowledge and information.

Pragmatically, Professor Bishop has put forth a visionary proposal known as the "Ending Book Hunger by 2030" global plan. This ambitious initiative aims to eradicate the barriers that hinder individuals from accessing books and reading materials by the year 2030. By addressing issues such as unequal distribution, affordability, and accessibility, Professor Bishop's plan seeks to create a world where everyone has equal opportunities to satisfy their thirst for knowledge.

In addition to her conceptual and pragmatic endeavors, Professor Bishop has shown an innovative approach by exploring the impact of ChatGPT, an advanced language model, on the right to read. By investigating the potential benefits and challenges of AI technologies like ChatGPT in relation to literacy and access to information, she has shed light on the evolving landscape of reading rights and the transformative role of technology. Her research contributes to the ongoing conversation on how emerging technologies can be harnessed to empower individuals and expand access to educational resources globally.

Professor Bishop's work on increasing the global population's access to knowledge to create a more inclusive and literate world is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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    Ending Childhood Book Hunger
    (Center for Translating Research Into Practice, IU Indianapolis, 2023-06-23) Bishop, Lea
    Professor Lea Bishop is recognized internationally as a leading expert on book hunger and the right to read. Her research on intellectual property and distributive justice has shaped human rights law at the United Nations and informed her proposal for a plan to end childhood book hunger globally by 2030. She is tenured at Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where she teaches copyright law and human rights and studies the impact of ChatGPT and other generative AI. During this presentation, Professor Bishop talks about her research on how emerging technologies can be harnessed to empower individuals and expand access to educational resources globally.
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    A Computer Wrote this Paper: What ChatGPT Means for Education, Research, and Writing
    (2023-01-26) Bishop, Lea
    Of particular interest to educators, an exploration of what new language-generation software does (and does not) do well. Argues that the new language-generation models make instruction in writing mechanics irrelevant, and that educators should shift to teaching only the more advanced writing skills that reflect and advance critical thinking. The difference between mechanical and advanced writing is illustrated through a "Socratic Dialogue" with ChatGPT. Appropriate for classroom discussion at High School, College, Professional, and PhD levels.
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    Can ChatGPT 'Think Like a Lawyer?' A Socratic Dialogue
    (2023-01-26) Bishop, Lea
    A witty socratic dialogue with a language-generation model, exploring the aims of legal education in the new era of machine writing.
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    Access to Knowledge in Egypt: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2010) Shaver, Lea; Rizk, Nagla
    The conventional wisdom in Egypt examines the issue of intellectual property solely as a question of policing and enforcement. The high levels of protection indicated by the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights are unquestioningly assumed to be desirable. Policy debates - and all too often academic ones as well - focus only on the questions of how to more efficiently tighten IP protection and crack down on piracy. Yet a more critical examination is urgently needed, whereby IP law, policy, and practice are viewed from a development perspective, rather than from an enforcement perspective. This volume takes on this endeavor. It offers the first examination of IP issues in Egypt adopting a multidisciplinary bottom-up approach that aims at maximizing access and contribution to knowledge, and in turn, promoting development. Bringing rigorous empirical research to bear on unquestioned ideologies, the collaborating authors question the conventional wisdom that more IP protection is necessarily better for innovation and development.
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    Access to Knowledge in Brazil: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2010) Shaver, Lea
    Access to knowledge is a demand for democratic participation, for global inclusion and for economic justice. It is a reaction to the excessively restrictive international IP regime put in place over the last two decades, which seeks to reassert the public interest in a more balanced information policy. With sponsorship from the Ford Foundation, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School has embarked on a new series of access to knowledge research, in partnership with colleagues in Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Russia and South Africa. The first book in this series, Access to Knowledge in Brazil, focuses on current issues in intellectual property, innovation and development policy from a Brazilian perspective. Each chapter is authored by scholars from the Fundação Getulio Vargas law schools in São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro and examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge in the country. These include: exceptions and limitations to copyright, free software and open business models, patent reform and access to medicines, and open innovation in the biotechnology sector.
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    Local Language Limitations: Copyright and the Commons
    (Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, 2014-08) Shaver, Lea
    Copyright’s system of financial incentives is working well to encourage publishing in some languages, such as English and French, but not in all languages. The law should recognize this reality, and adjust the rules of copyright protection accordingly, creating different regulatory structures for different languages. Smaller language markets will require different regulatory structures to unleash their publishing potential—particularly languages where most readers are very poor. This article suggests that this tailoring can be achieved through the use of “local language limitations” to copyright protection. According to this proposal, a national legislature identifies one or more specific local languages as underserved by the publishing industry. It then enacts a statutory limitation on copyright protection, which creates a bounded commons for material in those languages. By enabling permissionless translation, adaptation, and reproduction, local language limitations will drive down the cost of works in those languages to prices that are affordable to the very poor, while creating legal room for lower-cost translation and distribution models. This approach has four novel virtues. First, it takes advantage of language barriers to promote access for disadvantaged readers, without reducing the protection afforded to authors and publishers in more profitable markets. Second, it illustrates the potential of innovative, syncretic approaches to IP protection, beyond the “one size fits all” model. Third, it promotes reform of copyright law at the domestic level, rather than at the international level, where developing countries have power. Fourth, it enables “copyright experimentalism,” making it possible for researchers and policy makers to draw empirical lessons about the impact of copyright law on creativity based on real-world experience. The Article first introduces the problem of neglected languages of publishing and explains why there are good reasons to believe that loosening copyright rules will, in certain contexts, result in greater creativity as well as broader access. It then explains the proposal for local language limitations, exploring variations on the approach, identifying potential pitfalls, responding to objections, and recommending best practices. Finally, the article discusses the compatibility of local language limitations with international treaties on intellectual property and human rights.
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    Access to Knowledge in India: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development
    (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011) Subramanian, Ramesh; Shaver, Lea
    This is the third volume in our Access to Knowledge series. India is a $1 trillion economy which nevertheless struggles with a very high poverty rate and very low access to knowledge for almost seventy percent of its population which lives in rural areas. This volume features four parts on current issues facing intellectual property, development policy (especially rural development policy) and associated innovation, from the Indian perspective. Each chapter is authored by scholars taking an interdisciplinary approach and affiliated to Indian or American universities and Indian think-tanks. Each examines a policy area that significantly impacts access to knowledge. These include information and communications technology for development; the Indian digital divide; networking rural areas; copyright and comparative business models in music; free and open source software; patent reform and access to medicines; the role of the Indian government in promoting access to knowledge internationally and domestically.
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    Intellectual Property and the Right to Science and Culture: the Reports of the Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights
    (International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, 2016) Shaver, Lea
    In recent years, the right to science and culture has emerged as a leading conceptual framework for reconciling intellectual property law with human rights. The textual foundation of the right to science and culture dates back to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 27 of the UDHR states: “(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” Despite clear grounding in the international human rights documents, this particular provision has long suffered from obscurity and confusion about its meaning. Fortunately, a new wave of scholarship provides a more solid conceptual foundation for the right to science and culture. This new literature understands the right to science and culture as having two complementary aspects. The “protection” aspect of the right calls for attention to the moral and material interests of authors and scientists. The “participation” aspect emphasises inclusion in the processes of creative expression and scientific discovery, as well as access to the fruits of cultural and technological creativity. This dual nature allows the right to science and culture to play a unique role in intellectual property debates. The encounter between the international human rights and IP regimes had previously been framed strongly in terms of conflict between IP protection and human rights demands. In contrast, the right to science and culture frames both protection and access in human rights terms. It thus points towards solutions in the nature of integrating and reconciling intellectual property and human rights principles, rather than asserting the primacy of one set of interests over the other. These ideas have now found acceptance within the United Nations system. The UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, first offered a detailed and authoritative interpretation of the right to science in a May 2012 report adopted by the UN Human Rights Council (A/HRC/20/26). Among many themes, this report considered the role of intellectual property in shaping enjoyment of the right to science. Between 2013 and 2015, the Special Rapporteur decided to focus even further on understanding and explaining the relationship between intellectual property and the right to science and culture. This subsequent work ultimately resulted in two major reports by the Special Rapporteur, one focused on copyright (A/HRC/28/57) and the other on patents (A/70/279). This short article examines the origins, development, and conclusions of these two reports. I had the privilege to serve as a consultant to the Special Rapporteur in this process, producing drafts, participating in all meetings organised to solicit expert feedback on the drafts, and collaborating on their finalisation. My aim here is to provide an accessible overview of the substance of these reports, as well as to take the reader “behind the scenes” to appreciate some of the challenges and difficulties encountered during the process to provide insight on the choices ultimately made.
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    Ending Book Hunger: Access to Print Across Barriers of Class and Culture
    (Yale University Press, 2020) Shaver, Lea
    Worldwide, billions of people suffer from book hunger. For them, books are too few, too expensive, or do not even exist in their languages. This book argues that this is an educational crisis: the most reliable predictor of children's achievement is the size of their families' book collections. This book highlights innovative nonprofit solutions to expand access to print. First Book, for example, offers diverse books to teachers at bargain prices. Imagination Library mails picture books to support early literacy in book deserts. Worldreader promotes mobile reading in developing countries by turning phones into digital libraries. Pratham Books creates open access stories that anyone may freely copy, adapt, and translate. Can such efforts expand to bring books to the next billion would-be readers? The book reveals the powerful roles of copyright law and licensing, and sounds the clarion call for readers to contribute their own talents to the fight against book hunger.
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    Ending Book Hunger: Social Publishing and the Power of Mission-Driven Innovation
    (Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, 2015) Shaver, Lea
    Around the world, billions of people find that books are too expensive, too difficult to find, or are simply not being published in the languages that they speak. The problem of “book hunger” is pervasive across the developing world, and for lower-income adults and children in the United States. This market failure comes at an enormous social cost. The lack of affordable and appropriate reading material is holding back education as a path out of poverty. Fortunately, a solution exists. This book examines the growing sector of “social publishing,” an emerging non-profit sector driven by the belief that all people should enjoy opportunities to read, regardless of their income or native language. This book offers a descriptively rich, accessible account of the inspiring world of social publishing, drawing upon extensive interviews with organizational leaders driving the evolution of this emerging sector. Case studies of organizations both in the United States and abroad explore the many challenges social publishers face – including geographic, cost, and language barriers – and the innovative solutions they are developing to forge a new business model for low-cost, multilingual, truly multicultural publishing. The book’s central objectives are to document the emerging practices of social publishers, to generate insight about what makes their efforts successful or unsuccessful, and to derive broader lessons from this particular case study of social innovation. A key theme of this research is the role of social mission in driving business model innovation. To deliver books that are appropriate, attractive, and affordable to neglected readerships, social publishers cannot simply imitate the established business models of for-profit publishers. Instead, they are forced to innovate radically different strategies in the areas of content acquisition, production, and marketing. These innovations include free-to-the-reader pricing, digital distribution, open licensing, and distributed authorship. A full appreciation of these innovative business models for social publishing is central to solving the problem of book hunger sustainably and at scale. More broadly, understanding the phenomenon of “mission-driven innovation” can also inform other initiatives in philanthropy, nonprofit management, social innovation, public policy, and corporate social responsibility.