OCT 11 Creative Commons Policy Roundup

[Timothy Vollmer]

Copyright reform in Colombia should focus on supporting users’ rights

We submitted a letter to the Colombian government calling on them to support user-friendly changes to copyright. 

"IP-intensive" jobs found primarily in grocery stores, not Hollywood

Via Knowledge Ecology International, who posted some interesting stats about a report from the United States Patent and Trademark Office on "IP-intensive" industries. Apparently, about 20% of these "IP-intensive" jobs involve copyright, with the leaders being: 1) Grocery stores: 2.6 million jobs, 2) Computer systems design: 1.8 million jobs, and 3) Management consulting: 1.4 million jobs. "Sound recording Industries" only provide 23,500 jobs--which is 0.0008 of all "IP-intensive" jobs. You'd never know this with the millions of dollars in lobbying from the RIAA. ;)

For data sharing, norms trump licenses

Open license super-lawyer Luis Villa writes a thought-provoking post about the importance of project and community norms--as opposed to legally binding licenses, especially with regard to data sharing. 

Google swallows 11,000 novels to improve AI's conversation

Hmmm. Is the Authors Guild is ramping up for round 2 of a lawsuit? The article is quite interesting from a text and data mining standpoint. From U.S. court decisions, Google is able to copy works without permission in order to power search—in addition to being able to display small snippets around search queries. It has been deemed to be a fair use, in which the 4 factors (purpose of the use, nature of the underlying work, amount used, and effect on the work’s value) need to be weighed in each case. It will be interesting to see what happens with this--clearly there’s a commercial interest from Google’s side, but the use seems quite transformative.

University of Kansas Libraries: The Rent is Too Damn High!

For access to academic journals, that is. And with slashed budgets, university libraries are finding it harder to provide access. And the publishers continue to bundle journals, instead of permitting payments for those that the universities require. What a scam. Says KU: "The system by which scholarly works are given away to commercial publishers and then sold back to colleges and universities is increasingly unsustainable."

Cancer Moonshot Should Prioritize Open Access to Publicly-funded Research

We keep saying it. If Biden's project wants to make ten years’ worth of progress on cancer research in half that time, it's crucial to drastically improving access to research and data.  

Marrakesh Treaty in effect

It's about time. The Marrakesh Treaty is a vital step to improve access to books and other copyrighted material for those who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled. These protections are long overdue; the right to read should be guaranteed for everyone.

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