November 30 Creative Commons Policy Roundup
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Timothy Vollmer
Nov 30, 2017, 2:55:36 PM11/30/17
to pol...@wikimedia.de, CC Staff, CC Affiliates, iol-n...@googlegroups.com, Open Policy Network
The reproduction fee hustle
"Faithfully photographing it generates no new copyright implications, and there is nothing in law to stop one reproducing (say) a Rembrandt, in any context, and without paying. But because most of us think we need to pay to secure a spurious image “licence”, museums get away with it. As a result, art programmes like mine show far less art than we’d like to. Far worse is the fact that academics and students are obliged to pay, too, severely restricting research and publications. Such fees are a pernicious tax on scholarship. It’s a scandal that our publicly owned art is monetised in this way."
The copyright reform proposal is a threat to fundamental rights, the economy, education and creativity!
"It has been well over a year since the European Commission has presented its proposal for adapting the EU copyright rules to the realities of the digital age. The proposed changes (as flawed as they may be) are part of an agenda to make Europe more competitive and to stimulate economic growth ... It is still possible to make sure that the ongoing copyright reform process will result in rules that make Europe more competitive and to stimulate economic growth. For that to happen all policy makers involved (including the ministers meeting in Brussels today) need to show more willingness to face the fact that the future is indeed digital."
WIPO Broadcast Treaty Turns to Limitations and Exceptions
"The Broadcast limitations and exceptions are entirely permissive. It does not require an exception for quotation, as does the Berne Convention. It does not require exceptions for temporary copies needed to make legitimate transmissions, as does the EU InfoSoc Directive. Nor does it even require countries to “endeavor to achieve an appropriate balance” as does the newly agreed upon 11-country Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement."
Making the public domain accessible
"Some books published after 1923 have a lapsed copyright and could be included in HathiTrust’s collection of publicly available books, while others had their copyright renewed and are still under its protections. Determining which titles fall into which category requires title-by-title investigation. A group of Libraries staff are working with HathiTrust to investigate titles with the goal of expanding the reach of public domain and enriching the selection of publicly available materials on the internet."
Updated NAFTA Negotiation Objectives Show Promise on Digital Trade, Balanced Copyright
"The explicit reference to exceptions and limitations is welcome and shows an acknowledgement by USTR of the importance of balanced copyright in trade agreements. However, it is not clear whether the position of the U.S. is to also pursue other balanced copyright protections enshrined in U.S. law such as Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The Section 512 safe harbors provide critical protection for intermediaries from liability for third parties’ content that may infringe copyright."
Argentine Government Revokes WTO Accreditation of Key Civil Society Organizations
"In an unprecedented action, the Argentine government has revoked the accreditation of 63 civil society experts ― trade unionists, development advocates, digital rights activists, environmentalists, and others ― just days before the 11th Ministerial meeting of the WTO (MC11) in Buenos Aires, advising the WTO that the experts will not be allowed in the country to participate in the meeting."
Commentary: The FCC Has Always Defended Net Neutrality. Why Stop Now?
"Earlier this week Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced a radical plan to undo the net neutrality protections that have been in place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Internet. He wants to eliminate the protections that have kept companies such as Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon from blocking sites, slowing down or speeding up applications, and charging sites just so their websites load for an Internet service provider’s (ISP) subscribers."
PLOS Reports $1.7M Loss In 2016
"The Public Library of Science (PLOS) reported a loss of 1.7 Million $US in 2016, according to their latest financial disclosure, which was released late last week ... As PLOS relies almost entirely on article processing charges (APCs) for its revenue, a steep reduction of more than six-thousand research papers in PLOS ONE alone deprived the publisher of a large portion of its annual revenue."
Unrestricted Text and Data Mining with allofPLOS
"With allofPLOS, in addition to the content of every PLOS article (excluding Figures or Supplemental Data) provided in JATS XML format, the XML parsing tools are provided. By including tags, content and parsing tools together, we hope to simplify and streamline the process for those wanting to experiment with content mining and TDM tools. With content mining, scientists, educators, policymakers and others can identify and map patterns and trends across millions of articles, extract the information they want, and gain new insights to advance research. TDM results can be shared as a new research article or as a database for others to use."
The Sad Legacy Of Copyright: Locking Up Scientific Knowledge And Impeding Progress
"The people writing these academic papers are almost never incentivized by the copyright. Hell, in most cases, the journals they publish in require the copyright be turned over to the journal. The journal, which profits massively from all this free labor, seems to disproportionately benefit from this setup. It gets the copyright. It charges insane amounts -- mainly to a captive audience of universities which feel required to pay extortionate rates -- and everyone else gets left out (or has to resort to infringement). It's difficult to see how anyone can justify this system in an intellectually honest manner."
Is A Cost-Neutral Transition To Open Access Realistic?
"There are three main components as to why legacy publishers are charging so much: 1) Inefficiency – with a margin of 40% and a market that carries essentially any price increase, there is little pressure to cut down on costs, 2) Paywalls – legacy publishers have to maintain a huge infrastructure related to preventing access, and 3) Profits – legacy publishers are accustomed to profit margins of about 40%, i.e., about US$2,000 of the US$5,000 they are collecting per subscription article, on average."
Big Deal Cancellation Tracking
"Large publishers have marketed bundles of journals at a discount off of aggregated list price since the late 1990’s. The value proposition for publishers is a guaranteed revenue stream at a high overall dollar value. The perceived benefit for the institutions has been access to a large volume of journal titles, at a lower per-title price than ala carte purchasing would afford. Over time, however, the actual value of these “big deals” has grown less clear. Publishers have often raised the price of the packages by 5-15%, far outpacing library budgets."
BONUS SADNESS
Elsevier stock "Can’t Be More Hot", reaches 52-Week High. Elsevier and the rest of the commercial scholarly publishing world soars with record earnings, continuing to ride the lucrative train that socializes risk and cost, but privatizes profits. An ongoing scandal of epic proportions.
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