June 2 Creative Commons Policy Roundup

[Timothy Vollmer]

NAFTA is back on the table

The Trump administration has officially notified Congress of its intent to negotiate changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative has opened a formal request for comments regarding the negotiating objectives for modernizing NAFTA. The initial comment period ends on 12 June, and we are considering a submission with the EFF. Last month that group released a set of demands on trade transparency. It's not yet clear what the substance of the changes will be with regard to intellectual property, but one can imagine it will include some of the worst aspects we've seen in TPP and other recent free trade negotiations.  

Wikipedia wants fair use in Australia

Wikipedia is urging users in Australia to tell their government representatives to champion fair use. The campaign, organised alongside Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Digital Alliance, advocates for policy makers to update copyright law to include fair use, thus providing a progressive legal framework to support creators and remixers, educational activities, and new business opportunities. The issue is important to the Wikipedia community because around 10% of the English Wikipedia’s 5 million articles incorporate some content under fair use.

Diego Gomez cleared of criminal charges, for now 

Diego Gómez, the Colombian student who for the last three years has been prosecuted for sharing an academic paper online, has been cleared of criminal charges. The prosecutor has appealed the ruling, so the case will continue. Instead of prosecuting students for sharing knowledge, our societies should be encouraging the free exchange of scientific information by reinforcing positive norms around scholarship and collaboration, promoting open access to research, and toning down out of control copyright remedies that serve no reasonable public interest purpose. A crowdfunding campaign will be launched soon to help pay for Diego's ongoing legal defense. 

Dozens of organizations call on European Parliament to redouble efforts for progressive copyright changes

Creative Commons and over 60 organisations sent an open letter urging European lawmakers to “put the copyright reform back on the right track”. The letter criticizes the Commission’s lackluster proposal, and calls on the Parliament and Council to spearhead crucial changes that promote creativity and business opportunities, enable research and education, and protect user rights in the digital market. This all takes place in a political environment where a faction of the European Parliament is proposing alternative amendments to the Commission’s plan that would not only retain the harmful ancillary copyright and upload filtering mechanisms, but make them much, much worse. Terrible. 

OASPA shows Steady Growth of Articles in Fully OA Journals Using a CC-BY License

With data. 

Music Industry’s Canadian Copyright Reform Goal: “End Tech Companies’ Safe Harbours”

From Michael Geist: "The removal of safe harbours – relied upon by everyone from Wikipedia to the Internet Archive – would instantly result in the removal of a massive amount of legitimate content, increase surveillance or content filtering of website activity, create a huge burden on new, innovative companies, and curtail freedom of expression."

EU revisiting database rights

The European Commission wants to hear feedback on the impact and possible changes to the Database Directive—the EU law that gives a special "sweat of the brow" right to a creator of a database which does not qualify for copyright. The database right has been in effect since 1996. Comments will be accepted until 30 August. 

Academics ‘should not sign over research copyright to publishers’

Obviously.