Four Georgian publishers that are facing bankruptcy because of a government scheme to commandeer the textbook market took their case to the European Court of Human Rights, this month, in a last-gasp bid for survival.

The Knesset has this month voted to abolish Israel’s trial fixed book price law from 1 September 2016, something the Israeli Publishers Association describes as a populist move that will undermine the independence of publishers in the country.

The IPA has told Bangladesh’s Secretary of Culture, Aktari Mamtaz, that responsibility for the spate of violent attacks on publishers and writers lies only with the perpetrators, and not the victims, at a ground-breaking freedom to publish conference, in Dhaka.

The International Publishers Association and its Freedom to Publish Committee today renewed its call for the immediate release of a 73-year-old publisher held in Dhaka since February, after the High Court of Bangladesh denied his application for bail.

In 1985, Professor Michael Fraser entered the complex world of copyright by accident. Having casually responded to a job ad in the Sydney Morning Herald (and having got the job as 'the only applicant wearing a tie'), the young Michael Fraser's career began with a three-week investigation into the growing problem of photocopying, for the Australian Copyright Council.

Three years after the Kenyan government introduced VAT on books, the country's publishing and bookselling industries – of which educational books represent 85% – have been decimated by the move, according to the Kenyan Publishers Association (KPA).