March 7 Creative Commons Policy Roundup
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Timothy Vollmer
Mar 7, 2018, 12:54:13 PM3/7/18
to CC Staff, CC Affiliates, iol-n...@googlegroups.com, Open Policy Network, copyrigh...@creativecommons.email, pol...@wikimedia.de
Join us for the European Copyright Action Days 19-21 march in Brussels
This spring the ongoing effort to modernize the outdated copyright rules enters into the decisive fase. It is widely expected that both the European Parliament and the EU Member states will their position on the proposed Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. Right now things are not looking good: instead of a much needed update of the copyright framework that would enable new uses driven by technological innovation, policy makers in Brussels are working towards new restrictions that would would limit how information and creativity can be shared and enjoyed online. Against this backdrop we are organising European Copyright Action Days on 19-21 march in Brussels. During these days we want to highlight the broad opposition of civil society, libraries, the users industry and many others concerning the restrictive aspects of the copyright reform proposal. During these days activists will convene in Brussels to discuss with lawmakers and advocate for a more future proof reform and to raise attention for the dangers of the proposed measures.
EU Publishers Acknowledge Snippet Tax Concerns, But Say: 'It's OK, You Can Trust Us'
This isn't just about making search engines pay for the privilege of using snippets of text: it would include every company, of whatever size, and every public body, however meritorious or altruistic its activities, that uses them. The new position paper is important because it makes clearer than ever before that the snippet tax is not about stopping a few big players like Google from indexing stories from publications. After all, that could be easily achieved by blocking the crawlers using the robot.txt file. Article 11 is about something much bigger. It is the latest expression of the publishing industry's apparently infinite sense of entitlement -- that it has a right to control even "individual words or very short extracts of text" used by "any commercial entity or organisation, regardless of their business model", as the document puts it.
MEP Voss sells out freedom of expression, doubles down on protecting Big Content
After more than a year of discussions MEP Axel Voss has finally come forward with his ideas about one of the most controversial aspects of the EU copyright reform proposal. On Wednesday he shared his compromise proposals for Article 13 of the proposed copyright in the DSM directive, that deals with filtering measures aimed at online platforms. The “compromises” drafted by MEP Voss make it clear that with regards to article 13 he has chosen to do the bidding of the music industry at the expense of users, open platforms and pretty much the rest of the internet.
Time is running out for net neutrality
Last week the official notice of the repeal was published in the Federal Register, meaning that now the clock is ticking. If Congress or the courts do not intervene before 23 April 2018 (60 days after the notice), net neutrality will be a thing of the past. Today we’re joining the massive online campaign that will flood the Senate with calls and emails. The goal of the action is to secure the final vote needed to pass the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution restoring net neutrality. If 50 votes are secured in the Senate, then the fight will shift to the House of Representatives.
Fair Use Week 2018
Last week dozens of orgs and hundreds of individual supporters celebrated 2018 Fair Use Week. It's an annual celebration designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use, fair dealing, and other flexible limitations and exceptions to copyright. Check out some of the awesome resources and writing at http://fairuseweek.org/resources/ or search for #FairUseWeek on twitter.
Tell the Canadian government to ignore Bell’s terrible idea to block websites
Earlier this month Bell and a group of Canadian telecommunications and media companies submitted a proposal that asks the Canadian government to identify websites engaged in content piracy and compel internet service providers to block access to those sites. Specifically, the proposal asks the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to set up an “Internet Piracy Review Agency.” The agency would be responsible for identifying websites that are “blatantly, overwhelmingly or structurally” involved in piracy. After the sites are identified, internet service providers would be notified and required to block access to those sites. [...] There could be overblocking of sites that have significant non-infringing uses, such as torrent sites that track and share open source software, openly licensed creative works, and works in the public domain.
Trump Administration Sends Annual Trade Agenda Report to Congress
Trump wants to extend Trade Promotion Authority (fast track) until 2021. Fast track means that the President gets to negotiate international agreements that Congress can approve or deny but cannot amend or filibuster. So, not only will trade agreements continue to be negotiated in secret, fast track keeps even Congress in the dark, with all power concentrated at the top.
Comments to the Mexican Senate on Copyright Provisions in the NAFTA Renegotiation
The three-step test has evolved from an enabling clause in the Berne Convention into the prime mechanism being used to exert international limitations to domestic intellectual property exceptions. NAFTA marks a key moment of its shift. It, followed by the WTO TRIPS agreement, extended the three step test from the reproduction right to all rights, and from relatively unenforceable international IP agreements into forums that can adjudicate trade disputes. With that shift has come a new and potentially devastating legal argument. It is frequently argued by industries today that the words “certain special cases” require exacting certainty in the legislative definition of what those special cases are, and therefore bans general public interest exceptions. The problem with such exacting drafting, of course, is that it risks being under-inclusive. You rope off the future if you are required to foresee it in order for it to occur.
Scientists Aim To Pull Peer Review Out Of The 17th Century
“Today scientists are judged primarily by which journal publishes their work. The greatest rewards tend to go to scientists who can get their papers into major journals such as Science, Nature and Cell. It matters less what the actual findings are.”
How Scihub Is at the Forefront of the Quest to Frame Scientific Knowledge as Public Good
These publishers have essentially reduced knowledge to a commodity. But as one of the leading OA thinkers, Peter Suber wrote in his 2012 book, Open Access, “The idea is to stop thinking of knowledge as a commodity to meter out to deserving customers, and to start thinking of it as a public good, especially when it is given away by its authors, funded with public money, or both.” Or, as Elbakyan might put it, quoting the sociologist Robert Merton, “The communism of the scientific ethos is incompatible with the definition of technology as ‘private property’ in a capitalistic economy.”
Open-access charges ‘create new inequalities’ in publishing
A global shift towards open-access publishing is opening up new types of inequality within academia, according to research that highlights institutional “stratification” in publishing access outcomes. “Authorial and institutional stratification in open access publishing: the case of global health research”, published on PeerJ last month, offers evidence of a class division between universities, whereby researchers from lower-ranking institutions with fewer resources are often left with little choice but to publish in closed-access journals because they cannot afford to pay the article-processing charges associated with open-access alternatives.
Who May Swim in the Ocean of Knowledge?
A party not related to Sci-Hub obtained a copy of a significant portion of that database, and in turn provided me with a copy. I used that database to look for works authored by US federal employees, and found 1,264,429 journal articles. I then pulled a statistically valid random sample of 10,000 articles distributed across 30 of the top publishers and found that in the vast majority of the cases, the publishers were improperly asserting copyright over material that belongs to the public domain.
Is it time to nationalise academic publishers?
In 1998, The Economist hoped that, with the rise of electronic journals, “the days of 40% profit margins may soon be as dead as Robert Maxwell”. [...] Indeed, it is possible to imagine a world that has switched entirely to open access, yet publishers’ profits are as high as ever. The reason, as argued by Alex Holcombe and Björn Brembs, is that publishers control prestigious, legacy journals with high impact factors. Researchers are compelled to publish in these journals for the sake of their careers, even if they are more expensive than alternatives.
Project Gutenberg Blocks Access In Germany To All Its Public Domain Books Because Of Local Copyright Claim On 18 Of Them
This is a classic example of the chilling effect of heavy-handed moves by the copyright industry. In order to forestall further legal action, organizations lacking resources to stand up to legal bullying often decide it is safer to over-block. In this case, the whole of Project Gutenberg is now inaccessible to people in Germany. That's a serious loss of an important public domain resource, but it's just a taste of what could become routine in Europe.
BONUS GOODNESS
Public Policy wrapup from 2017: 8 important themes from Centrum Cyfrowe
Centrum Cyfrowe is one of the leading digital policy shops working in the EU, focusing on several policy areas including copyright change to benefit teaching, research on topics like artificial intelligence, supporting a progressive situation with regard to public sector information, and hosting the CC Poland project. They've also been keen on conducting training and education events for the community. Congrats and keep up the terrific work!
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