September 15 Creative Commons Policy Roundup
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Timothy Vollmer
Sep 15, 2017, 8:30:25 PM9/15/17
to CC Staff, CC Affiliates, copyrigh...@creativecommons.email, Open Policy Network, iol-n...@googlegroups.com
EU copyright reform
Statewatch published a compromise copyright reform proposal being discussed by the Estonian Presidency. It focuses on Articles 11 (press publishers right) and 13 (upload filters).
Statewatch also published a document of questions originating from the governments of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Ireland and the Netherlands to the council legal service regarding article 13 and recital 38. According to COMMUNIA, "These questions clearly show that these Member States have serious doubts about the Commission’s repeated assurances that the proposed censorship filters would not affect users’ fundamental rights, do not change the liability exemption of the e-commerce directive, do not constitute a general monitoring obligation and do not change the definition of what it means to make copyrighted works available online."
Creative Commons and major organisations from the library, research, education, and digital rights community sent a letter to the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee calling on it to protect open access and open science in the context of the proposed copyright directive. One focus of the letter is the extension of the press publisher's right to cover academic publications, as proposed by the Parliament’s Research Committee. We know that the press publisher’s right already poses a significant threat to an informed and literate society. Applying it to scientific research would worsen an already bad situation.
The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition has produced some research on Article 13. It calls on policymakers to reject Article 13 for a variety of reasons, including that it creates legal uncertainty, does not align with the InfoSoc Directive, is inconsistent with the E-Commerce Directive, and could threaten fundamental human rights.
Trade Negotiations
Several technology associations published a letter to U.S. Trade Ambassador Robert Lighthizer. In the NAFTA negotiations, the letter urges the U.S. "to seek a strong and balanced copyright framework based on US law. The inclusion of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors and clear language requiring copyright balance will advance US digital economy leadership and has the potential to spur untold future American innovation and economic growth." The letter highlights the importance and impact of fair use on the U.S. economy.
EFF and other orgs including Creative Commons wrote a letter to NAFTA negotiators to protest the lack of public engagement and to ask that the process be changed to give the public a greater role in negotiations that have an impact on international law-making affecting the Internet. EFF writes in their blog post: "This worrying retreat from democracy in trade negotiations mirrors a broader softening of support by governments for public participation in policy development."
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker mentioned transparency of trade negotiations in his State of the Union Speech: "Open trade must go hand in hand with open policy making. The European Parliament will have the final say on all trade agreements. So its Members, like members of national and regional parliaments, must be kept fully informed from day one of the negotiations. The Commission will make sure of this. From now on, the Commission will publish in full all draft negotiating mandates we propose to the Council. Citizens have the right to know what the Commission is proposing. Gone are the days of no transparency. Gone are the days of rumours, of incessantly questioning the Commission's motives. I call on the Council to do the same when it adopts the final negotiating mandates."
Scholarly Communications
Polka: "It is true that the public has more access to preprints and less so to the peer-reviewed, published paper. I would argue that the solution to that is in fact increasing access to the final paper, not decreasing access to preprints, which prevents information from flowing freely where it needs to within the scientific community."
Elsevier already received a copyright infringement decision in their favor against Sci-Hub, who is supposed to pay $15M. Now the American Chemical Society is doing the same thing.
SPARC and COAR comment on Elsevier's purchase of bepress. Both orgs pledge to "mak[e] the development of community-owned infrastructure a priority, and to using this opportunity to catalyze positive community action."
LIBER has published 5 principles for libraries to use when conducting Open Access negotiations with publishers.
Says author Enrique Dans: "It is difficult to convince a doctoral student or a teacher in a country or institution with few resources that they cannot access resources or publications in their area of interest, when what is at stake is the progress of science and knowledge."
Open Policy for Software Procurement in the EU
The Free Software Foundation Europe and a broad group of organisations including Creative Commons are supporting the Public Money, Public Code campaign. The initiative calls for the adoption of policies that require that software paid for by the public be made broadly available as Free and Open Source Software. Nearly 40 organisations and over 6200 individuals have already supported this action by signing the open letter. You can sign it too.
Open Data Policy in the U.S.
The OPEN Government Data Act is draft legislation that would ensure that federal government data is open, available, discoverable, and usable to the general public, businesses, journalists, and academics. If passed into law, it would essentially codify the Obama administration’s 2013 Executive Order. Now the text has been incorporated into a package of amendments within the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It looks like it will pass. Apparently it really helps (sadly) to attach legislation to massive and near must-pass U.S. military spending bills.
Monkey shit
Writes Masnick, "PETA and its high-priced lawyers lost really badly on a fundamental issue of copyright... and now they want to erase that precedent so they or others can try again."
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