February 21 Creative Commons Policy Roundup
2 views
Skip to first unread message
Timothy Vollmer
Feb 21, 2018, 6:13:59 PM2/21/18
to pol...@wikimedia.de, CC Staff, CC Affiliates, iol-n...@googlegroups.com, Open Policy Network, copyrigh...@creativecommons.email
Delhi Declaration on Open Access
"This declaration was drafted by a group comprising of researchers and professionals working for opening up access to research outputs for public good in India. The declaration is aimed at scientific communities, scholarly societies, publishers, funders, universities and research institutions to promote openness in science and research communications... We will take forward the concept of Open Access to further bring all the publicly funded research outputs (not limited to journal literature alone) to be freely available under open licenses to the public to use, reuse and share in any media in open formats."
"At some point one wonders to what extent Council presidencies can just ignore half of the Member States in the room and go ahead with whatever script they were given by the European Commission, supported by a few big Member States and rightholder lobbies? Shouldn’t there at least be some form of ‘pretending’ that democracy is at play here? The approach taken here by the Bulgarians seems to indicate that ‘no’ is the answer…something citizens and governments should not consider acceptable."
Green light for upload filters: EU Parliament’s copyright rapporteur has learned nothing from year-long debate
"Rapporteur Axel Voss, has finally issued the text he wants the Parliament to go forward with. It’s a green light for censorship machines: Mr. Voss has kept the proposal originally penned by his German party colleague, former Digital Commissioner Günther Oettinger, almost completely intact. In doing so, he is dismissing calls from across the political spectrum to stop the censorship machines. He is ignoring one and a half years of intense academic and political debate pointing out the proposal’s many glaring flaws."
Research Paper: The Accuracy of Rights Statements on Europeana.eu
"We have constructed a methodology in which we individually assessed the accuracy of the rights statements of a representative sample of the digital objects made available via Europeana. The results from the sample give an indication of the accuracy of the rights statements of the entire database of Europeana. The results show that at least 61.8% of the rights statements were accurately applied and that at least 9.1% were inaccurate based on the available information. The accuracy of 17.4% of the rights statements is questionable, while for 8.8% it was not possible to determine the accuracy. We recommend Europeana to:
- construct a clear policy on non-digital objects in which it becomes clear how these non-digital objects should be labelled;
- include the findings of this research in development of trainings and training materials;
- continue advocating for simpler copyright-term rules;
- enable its users to easily file errors related to rights statements;
- make efforts (together with the data partners) to strengthen the ability of the data partners to correctly apply Creative Commons licenses to digital objects;
- conduct further research on the application of Creative Commons statements and the issues posed by non-digital objects.
How copyright law is holding back Australian creators
A new study by Queensland University of Technology in Australia finds that "copyright law can act as a deterrent to creation, rather than an incentive for it. For the majority interviewed, seeking permission to reuse copyrighted content – for example, as snippets of music or video in films, or long quotes in written works – was a source of great frustration and confusion. The process was variously described as “incredibly stressful”, “terrifying” and “a total legal nightmare”."Science's Pirate Queen
"Elsevier boasts a nearly $35 billion market cap. It has reported a nearly 39 percent profit margin for its scientific publishing arm — which dwarfs, by comparison, the margins of tech titans such as Apple, Google, and Amazon ... On the whole, scientific publishing has become a market increasingly characterized by consolidation, soaring subscription fees, and rising profit margins. As a result, plenty of scientists, students, and journalists alike have come to see an empire of academic piracy as a necessity, raising the question: what value do publishers add to any given paper?"
Hollywood Has Some Wild Ideas For Copyright In NAFTA
"We wanted to share the two wildest ideas the entertainment industries are proposing in the new-NAFTA, so you can help us set the record straight before it’s too late:
- Safe harbors enable child pornography and human trafficking.
- Exceptions and limitations to copyright are unnecessary in trade agreements.
Federal Judge Says Embedding a Tweet Can Be Copyright Infringement
"Rejecting years of settled precedent, a federal court in New York has ruled that you could infringe copyright simply by embedding a tweet in a web page. Even worse, the logic of the ruling applies to all in-line linking, not just embedding tweets. If adopted by other courts, this legally and technically misguided decision would threaten millions of ordinary Internet users with infringement liability."
Bell to Employees: Click Here To Support Our Website Blocking Proposal at the CRTC
"A source has provided screen shots of internal Bell corporate correspondence encouraging employees to file interventions at the CRTC in support of its website blocking proposal ... internal corporate messaging from Bell to its employees telling them “you can let the CRTC know you support FairPlay Canada” is likely to raise concerns Bell will participate in the CRTC process on its own behalf and provide behind-the-scenes encouragement to employees to add supportive interventions."
BONUS SADNESS
Arrested for Translation: Japan Detains Five Chinese Nationals for Pirate Translation
"There are pirate translator groups comprised of fans voluntarily localizing media without permission. Usually, these are titles not intended to be localized for overseas markets. Japanese companies strike back with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices—legal digital cease and desist notices. Recently, actions against volunteer translators have escalated to arrests. At the start of February, five Chinese nationals were arrested in Japan (secondary source in English) for translating manga and games. The five suspects were allegedly part of a large translating group that distributes Chinese-translated Japanese media online."
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages