Author: Staff

Today nine NGOs sent a letter the WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing. The letter focuses on issues about transparency, conflicts of interest, and EWG outcomes. The whole EWG seems to be going very badly right now, in part because of the US government and much of Northern Europe is working hand and glove with the pharmaceutical industry, and partly because the Gates Foundation is protecting big pharma and seems to have an ideological attachment to strong IPR.

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Kira Alvarez is the Deputy Assistant USTR for Intellectual Property Enforcement, and the chief US negotiator for ACTA. According to her Linkedin bio, as late as October 2008, right before the election, she was the Time Warner Vice President for Global Public Policy, and before that, she was a lobbyist for Ely Lilly, the pharmaceutical company. Continue Reading →

At least four imprints of Random House (Ballantine, Dell, Del Rey and Spectra) have turned off text to speech in Kindle books that they give away at a zero price. Random House is owned by Bertelsmann AG, the German publishing giant. What is the rationale for soundproofing* these books?

Here are some examples of DRM’d soundproof books that are free to Kindle users who do not have visual impairments.

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