Hi all:
I occasionally send out some policy-related updates to our Creative Commons
network. Someone asked me to share it over here too. I hope it's
interesting or useful.
Cheers,
timothy
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Timothy Vollmer <tvol(a)creativecommons.org>
Date: Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 4:37 PM
Subject: DEC 15 Creative Commons Policy Roundup
*Information Policy under a Trump administration*
Here's an informative post
<https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/tracking-trump.html> by David
Wojick that explores some of the possible scenarios regarding public access
to publicly funded research and data under a Trump administration,
especially in relation to OSTP's 2013 policy
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research>
which requires that U.S. federal agencies with extramural research budgets
in excess of $100m/year to make that research publicly available no later
than 12 months after publication. Researchers are also concerned
<https://motherboard.vice.com/read/researchers-are-preparing-for-trump-to-delete-government-science-from-the-web>
:
“While we may not see the straightforward deleting of data, we expect to
see access to data starved out,” Michelle Murphy and
Patrick Keilty, who
are spearheading a “Guerrilla Archiving” event at the University of
Toronto, told me in an email. “It takes effort and money to keep databases
and portals updated and maintained, and to make them publicly available.
Moreover, data can move from being publicly shared through portals that
make it immediately accessible to less accessible, but still technically
public forms of availability.”
*Academic publishing houses lose appeal against Delhi University &
photocopy shop*
A Delhi High Court confirms
<https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2016/12/academic-publishing-houses-lose-appeal.html>
that
photocopying materials for educational course-packs is not an infringement
of copyright. Good.
*AAP, news publishers congratulate Trump; remind everyone they need more
rights, more enforcement*
The Association of American Publishers sent a letter
<https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/1508/lettertopresidentelectdonaldtrump12.15.16.pdf?10000>
to Trump: "Surely you understand the role that meaningful intellectual
property rights play in American entrepreneurial success..." A nefarious
nod to the publisher's opposition to the fact that the public should get
access to the research, education, and data its tax dollar pay for is
expressed in this little jab: "Publishers also need to be able to operate
in an environment free of overreaching regulations and unfair government
competition with the products and services they provide." And one news
publishing association
<http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/12/pushing-to-kill-regulations-and-weaken-fair-use-the-newspaper-lobby-is-asking-trump-for-change/>
went so far as to suggest that fair use must be curtailed, because, you
know, news publishers never rely on fair use in their reporting.
*The rent is too damn high!*The Alliance of Science Organisations in
Germany wrote a letter
<https://www.hrk.de/fileadmin/redaktion/hrk/02-Dokumente/02-02-PM/02-02-01-Englische-PM/2016_12_02_Allianz_Verhandlungen_Elsevier_EN.pdf>
to
Elsevier about the unsustainable pricing for access to scholarly journals
for academic and research institutions.
Despite its current profit margin of 40 percent, the
publisher is still
intent on pursuing price increases that are higher than the licence fees
paid until now. The publisher rejects more transparent business models that
are based on the publication service and would make publications more
openly accessible.
Now it appears
<https://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/en/news/details/voraussichtlich-keine-volltexte-von-zeitschriften-des-elsevier-verlags-ab-dem-112017/>
that
more than 60 major German research institutions will have no access to the
full texts of Elsevier journals beginning 1 January 2017.
*Senate moves ahead legislation to improve access to research, data*
The OPEN Government Data Act
<https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/12/12/senate-passes-historic-endorsement-of-open-government-data/>
which would make government data assets open by default (when not otherwise
prohibited by law). "To the extent practicable, Government data assets
published by or for an agency shall be made available under an open license
or, if not made available under an open license and appropriately released,
shall be considered to be published as part of the worldwide public
domain." Another piece of legislation passed by the Senate is the 21st
Century Cures Act
<https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/12/12/senate-passes-historic-endorsement-of-open-government-data/>.
It includes language that clarifies that the NIH director has the authority
to mandate the sharing of data and research outputs. It also provides
funding for the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
*Commercial sites must check all their links for piracy, rules Hamburg
court*
Reported by ArsTechnica
<http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/12/commercial-sites-must-check-all-their-links-for-piracy-rules-hamburg-court/>,
a Hamburg court ruled that "the operator of a website violated copyright by
publishing a link to material that was infringing, even though the site
operator was unaware of this fact." This decision goes further than the earlier
judgment <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS_Media_v._Sanoma>, which held
that linking to freely available material placed on the internet without
consent of the rights holder could be considered an infringement if the
person sharing the links knew the permission had not been granted, but they
still shared the link for financial gain.
The German case was unusual in that it concerned a link to a photograph
originally released under a Creative Commons (CC)
licence, thereby making
it freely available subject to certain conditions. On the site where the
copy in question was stored, the terms of the CC licence were not observed
properly, which meant that it constituted a copyright infringement. The
website owner that linked to that copy was unaware of this fact, and did
not check that the CC licence had been followed.
IPKat questioned
<https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2016/12/gs-media-finds-its-first-application-in.html>
the potential implications of this ruling: "It is obvious that such an
interpretation means that basically every kind of website run by a person
or company in business can trigger the obligation to rebut the presumption
that the link was posted in full knowledge of the unlicensed nature of the
publication linked to. It is most questionable if such outcome was really
intended by the CJEU."
*Launch of the Open Research Funders Group*
Today marks the launch
<http://www.orfg.org/news/2016/12/15/prominent-philanthropic-organizations-team-up-to-launch-open-research-funders-group>
of the Open Research Funders Group, a coalition of mostly philanthropic
funders that will work to increase access to research outputs. Inaugural
members include the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the American Heart
Association, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold
Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation.
*Copyright Reform in the EU*
COMMUNIA has been providing analysis of various parts of the European
Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single
Market
<https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/proposal-directive-european-parliament-and-council-copyright-digital-single-market>.
It's released position papers on the education exception
<http://www.communia-association.org/2016/12/05/commissions-proposal-education-devil-detail/>,
text and data mining
<http://www.communia-association.org/2016/12/12/commissions-proposal-text-data-mining-strategic-mistake/>,
and the proposal to create a new right for press publishers
<http://www.communia-association.org/2016/12/14/commissions-proposal-new-rights-press-publishers-terrible-solution-good-no-one/>.
More to come.
*Copyright Reform in the U.S.? *
The Judiciary Committee released a single-page copyright reform proposal
<https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Copyright-Reform.pdf>,
mainly focusing on changes to the Copyright Office. Says TechDirt
<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161208/11144936226/it-begins-congress-proposes-first-stages-copyright-reform-not-good.shtml>,
"the proposals in question are not horrible, but they're certainly not good
either."
--
Invest in an open future. Support Creative Commons today.
https://creativecommons.org/donate/