I was wondering, have people on this list had any contact with, or have
any thoughts about
rightsstatements.org (
http://rightsstatements.org) ?
I was in a twitter chat earlier with a digital librarian at University
College Dublin (re whether or not a copyright they were asserting for
Ordnance Survey Ireland re digitisation of some old maps had any basis
in reality), and, in passing, she proudly mentioned that they were going
to start adding
rightsstatements.org standard descriptions of copyright
status to all content.
I had a look at the site, and my first take was it must have been an
initiative from some of the major publishers, so loaded did it seem to
be towards promoting different options for *preventing* people doing
things with one's content.
I was quite surprised to find that actually it seems to be a 100% GLAM
initiative, initiated by DPLA and Europeana, with strong input from
Creative Commons, and Kennisland's Paul Keller as one of the chairs.
(And I see that our own Alex Stinson and Federico Leva even contributed
some thoughts in the development phase)
Yet to me (I don't know if others agree), the lead document at
http://rightsstatements.org/page/1.0/?language=en
seems rather hostile to the widest access, openness, and re-use.
Yes, Creative Commons licences /are/ in fact mentioned as the 1st-best
option in the body text, if one reads closely. But I have to admit I
missed that completely the first time I skimmed the page -- because it
is only the restrictions that get the big graphics and the emphasis.
My worry would be that if organisations like UCD make it a policy to
mark their material up with a
rightsstatements.org indicator wherever
possible, this will (subtly or not-so-subtly) lead them away from PD or
CC0 choices; or away from "attribution" requirements (which are not on
the page) towards "non-commercial" restrictions (which are).
(Any NC statement of course also opens up a huge can of worms as to just
what activities and by whom are or are not "non-commercial" -- something
the page does not flag up, and which the site offers no clarification
about, as to what might or might not be the intended meaning).
I am also quite concerned about the apparent endorsement given to the
"contractual restrictions" option, and indeed its prominence on the page
-- placed as the first option for non-copyright material, almost as if
to encourage institutions to see this as the appropriate default status.
"Contractual restrictions" seems a particularly nasty way to try to
fence in the public domain. It's also questionable in its
effectiveness. The long-term folk wisdom on Commons has been that if a
museum has a sign up saying "no photography" or "personal photography
only", but somebody takes a photograph and someone uploads it to
Commons, that any claim would stop (at most) with the photographer --
Commons has no contract with the museum, so is not a party to any
restrictions. That may be a slightly rose-tinted and self-serving view,
but it seems a little odd to see this option so blandly endorsed, and
indeed promoted, without any qualification.
It seems odd, given who they are, that the people behind
rightsstatements.org would produce a site that seems calculated to march
people *away* from the maximum openness, access, and impact.
Yet - I don't know if the list would agree - but to me that seems to be
exactly what the current presentation does, leading people away from
sharing and freedom, and instead normalising closure and restriction,
even for PD materials.
I'd like to know whether the list agrees with me on this; or whether I'm
being over-sensitive and perhaps just encountered the site in the wrong
frame of mind. But, since between us I think we have a lot of contacts
with the people involved with this project, if others see something in
these concerns, perhaps it might be worth a quiet word to see if the
presentation could perhaps be re-balanced a bit, to more even-handedly
present more open options?
-- James.
PS. Going back to the point of my initial discussion with UCD, if
copyrights /are/ being asserted on apparently well-published archival
material, it seems to me that it would be useful if the site encouraged
as standard best practice a statement of /why/ it was asserted that
there was copyright in the material -- eg whether there had genuinely
been a copyrightable expression of creativity or judgment involved.
This would lend such claims extra weight, in a world where there is so
much copyfraud around that such assertions otherwise might get casually
dismissed.
---
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