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Digital Music
de Beer's Digital Music course is a unique, inter-disciplinary and international survey of the global digital music scene. Together we canvas legal, cultural, commercial and technological aspects of the music industry in countries around the world. The objective is to think broadly about the policies that affect the future of digital music, and ultimately, the creation and consumption of our own culture.
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IP & Sustainable Development
Intellectual property (IP), among other things, governs the intersections among environmental sustainability, technological innovation and knowledge policy. This course begins by framing such issues within the global governance framework. It then explores a series of thematic subtopics: Does IP facilitate the transfer of clean technologies from developed to developing countries? What is the role of IP in conserving or sharing the benefits of biodiversity? How does IP operate to restrict or enable access to plants’ genetic resources for food and agriculture? Are Western notions of IP compatible with the environmental and social norms governing indigenous peoples throughout the world? Students in the course engage in interactive classroom discussion and actively participate in a simulation of international negotiations. Grades are based on a take-home examination, which requires to students to choose and answer one of several alternate questions.
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Property Law
An Introduction to Property law is a staple course in every law school curriculum, and I've been teaching the subject at the University of Ottawa for 8 years. My co-authored/edited casebook is used to cover cutting-edge topics touching on issues of real, personal, intellectual, and aboriginal property rights. Equal emphasis is placed on theoretical and technical aspects of the law, never losing site of the public policy issues and social justice perspectives that are so important in this area.
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Global IP Policy
How does global patent policy impact the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, and why is that relevant to the real threat of other worldwide pandemics? What is the link between intellectual property law, environmental biodiversity and climate change? Is copyright constraining access to learning materials and education, and if so, who is affected, where, how and why? Are Western-style copyrights, patents and trade-marks appropriate to protect the traditional knowledge and cultures of indigenous peoples throughout the world? How is international intellectual property policy affecting the use of the internet and mobile communication networks as mediums for cultural transformation and more participatory system of democracy? Does the increasing concentration of patents over plants' genetic resources threaten the livelihoods of subsistence farmers, or even global food security more generally? This course on Global Intellectual Property Policy tackles all of those questions, and more, through the lens of social justice: "access to knowledge," or A2K as some say.
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