Sept 29 Creative Commons Policy Roundup

[Timothy Vollmer]

Open access to research

A group of researchers has published a paper suggesting Principles of the Scholarly Commons. Principle #2: Research​ ​and​ ​knowledge​ ​should​ ​be​ ​freely​ ​available​ ​to​ ​all​ ​who​ ​wish​ ​to​ ​use​ ​or​ ​reuse it. This means that 1) the commons is open by default and 2), scholarly objects in the commons is FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable by humans and machines.

Elsevier wants to create its own Wikipedia so you never have to leave their platform to consult the web. They also published a cryptic statement regarding a transition from green to gold open access. Toby Green from OECD has a short response: 

If there is one industry that is truly global in nature, it is scholarly publishing. This won’t be news to you, but if scientific articles are increasingly co-authored on an international basis and these papers tend to be more highly cited, then surely it is a nonsense that an article could be open in Europe but closed in Australia. A regional approach would also prolong inequality between the haves and haves not, which must be unacceptable at a time when digital has opened the way to bridging divides at almost no cost.

At the Ministerial meeting in Italy for the G7 "Innovation Week," science ministers published a document. Of particular note: 

We recognize that ICT developments, the digitisation and the vast availability of data, efforts to push the science frontiers, and the need to address complex economic and societal challenges, are transforming the way in which science is performed towards Open Science paradigms. We agree that an international approach can help the speed and coherence of this transition, and that it should target in particular two aspects. First, the incentives for the openness of the research ecosystem: the evaluation of research careers should better recognize and reward Open Science activities. Secondly, the infrastructures for an optimal use of research data: all researchers should be able to deposit, access and analyse scientific data across disciplines and at the global scale, and research data should adhere to the FAIR principles of being findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

  

"Free trade" agreements 

With the help of several CC teams, we published a policy analysis covering several copyright-related issues presented in the draft intellectual property chapter of EU-Mercosur free trade agreement. We examine issues that would be detrimental to the public domain, creativity and sharing, and user rights in the digital age. The policy paper is also available in Spanish and Portuguese.

NAFTA negotiations continue in the dark. The most recent meeting was held in Ottawa. Apparently intellectual property is being discussed, but it's not yet clear that there is a working text. Even if there was, it wouldn't work its way to the public except through a leak. We've heard that the negotiators might be approaching the IP section in NAFTA without even the minimal language around "copyright balance" that was in the TPP. Hopefully Canada will push back on further ratcheting up of IP protections, including the copyright term extension that was proposed in TPP and which might be considered within NAFTA. Canada's copyright term still stands at life of the author + 50 years (as opposed to +70 for the U.S. and +100! for Mexico). 

Canadian telecom giant Bell is calling for draconian measures for copyright enforcement in NAFTA, including website blocking and the introduction of criminal liability for all commercial copyright infringement. 

Matt Schruers from DisCo Project/CCIA has an excellent analysis of NAFTA copyright positioning, especially regarding industry stances on safe harbours and copyright "balance."

No joke: trade lobby groups (including the vile American Legislative Exchange Council) wrote a letter to NAFTA negotiators asserting that balanced copyright violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

EU copyright reform

As Europe waits for the final Parliament opinions from LIBE and JURI on the draft copyright directive, the member states have not been standing still. Now Germany--in addition to 6 other countries--has asked questions to the Council legal service about the legality of Article 13 of the proposed Digital Single Market directive. COMMUNIA published an updated policy position with regard to Article 13. 

The European Alliance for Research Excellence wrote about the importance of policy development in support of text and data mining--from an innovation and economic perspective. It says about the Commission's draft TDM exception: "the proposed TDM regulation kills any chance of an European data economy that is driven by European companies. In the case of legal access to a public document, there should be no difference as to whether the information contained therein is processed by a person or by a machine. Computers and algorithms have no joy in the artistic expression of the work that is protected by copyright law." We agree. COMMUNIA also signed a letter alongside 20 other orgs in support of expanding the TDM exception so that it applies to anyone, for any purpose. We've also seen the Estonian compromise proposal regarding the TDM exception. It's weak. 

Evidence-based policymaking down the memory hole! Last week MEP Julia Reda shared an unpublished report of a study examining the effects of copyright infringement on sales of creative works. Apparently the contract for the economic research was tendered by the Commission in 2014 for €360,000. It was completed in 2015 but never published, and Reda received a copy of the report after several freedom of information requests. The background of the study hinges on the assumption that “illicit use of copyrighted material reduces revenues of rights-holders and thus their incentives to produce content.” However, "the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements."

The Commission has opened a public consultation on the review of the directive on the re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI Directive). Responses to the questionnaire are due 12 December 2017.

Canada copyright reform

In addition to their 5-year legislative copyright review, Canada is looking separately at reforms for the Copyright Board, which is the body that regulates licensing tariffs for CMOs--collective management organisations. They've been running a public consultation that ends today. CC Canada submitted a response. 

Australia copyright reform

The Australian Government is looking for feedback on 2 draft updates to copyright law there: the Copyright Regulations 2017 and the Copyright Legislation Amendment (Technological Protection Measures) Regulations 2017. Comments are due 6 October. 

Glyn Moody has a nice interview with Delia Browne on education exceptions to copyright. 

Open government data

The OPEN Government Data Act passed in the U.S. Senate, as a part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It now needs to be reconciled with the House version and final vote will be taken. If passed, it goes to Trump for signature. The legislation would ensure that federal government data is open, available, discoverable, and usable to the general public, businesses, journalists, and academics. If passed into law, it would essentially codify the Obama administration’s 2013 Executive Order. 

DRM is eating the world, again (this time with W3C endorsement!)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has formally agreed on standardizing web browser video DRM called the Encrypted Media Extension. EFF wrote about it, and resigned from the W3C. 

BONUS READING

Ruth Coustick-Deal from Open Media published an excellent essay called Trickle-Down Ethics: Is what's good for 'Innovation' good for human rights? From the article: "Belief in 'Innovation', in the concept that has been co-opted by capitalism, is not a philosophy we can rely on to always be on the side of right. It is not a principle, like free expression or the right to privacy."