February 5 Creative Commons Policy Roundup
Timothy Vollmer
New Canadian rightsholder coalition calls for SOPA-like website blocking
This week Bell Canada and a group of several other telecommunications companies and associations released a proposal calling for the Canadian government to setup an “Internet Piracy Review Agency” to identify and require ISPs to block websites involved with content piracy. The move has been widely criticised by Michael Geist, OpenMedia, and other public interest advocates. Does Canada even have a piracy problem? Probably not. Says David Fewer from CIPPIC: “Canada is always labeled a ‘piracy haven’ whenever special interests call for more, longer and stronger copyright protection [...] I wouldn’t expect things to be any different this time around, and they’re not.”
NAFTA negotiations continue
CC has been following the development of several multilateral trade agreements, including the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Assuming that IP is on the table again, we’ve called on negotiators to ensure stronger protections for copyright limitations and exceptions and user rights, and also for radical reforms to make the proceedings transparent, inclusive of diverse stakeholders, and accountable to the public. The negotiations continue in secret. The latest issue of concern is around safe harbors. Fifty-five internet law experts and organizations have written a letter urging trade negotiators to protect online platforms from being sued for content posted by others on their sites. At the same time, the entertainment industry groups don’t want this protection carried into NAFTA because, well, piracy.
New OER policy resource from Creative Commons USA
Last month CC USA released their OER State Legislative Guide, “a resource for state policymakers interested in tackling the high cost of college textbooks and improving student outcomes.” In addition to the CC USA document, SPARC published a related OER State Policy Playbook.
Improving the re-use potential of public sector information in Europe
The Communia Association is a collective of organisations and activists working to strengthen and enrich the public domain (Creative Commons is a founding member). The current focus of the association is policy analysis and advocacy within the context of the EU copyright reform. But it also tracks and comments on related policy issues. Last week Communia published a new policy policy paper on the European Commission’s 2017 review of the Directive on Public Sector Information (PSI Directive). The Directive, which first came into effect in 2003 and was amended in 2013, attempts to improve the potential for re-use of public sector information in Europe. Communia offered several new recommendations to improve the policy.
Universities questioning “big deal” subscriptions with Elsevier
Some German universities are already rejecting “big deal” contracts with Elsevier, citing increasing costs for access to their digital journals, and other restrictive terms of service. Now other universities are beginning to question their deals with big commercial publishers too. A major challenge is the secret costs and disparate pricing charged by the big publishers. A recent freedom of information request submitted by a Swiss activist uncovered that the nation’s research institutes were paying 70 million Swiss Francs a year (a little over €60 million) for subscriptions that other nations pay half or less for.