Copyright

Open Access & Science

This is another post for Commons Machinery

In the 17th century, radical ideas were blooming and with these ideas came the need to share them so that they would benefit the largest amount of people. The first scientific journals (the French Journal des sçavans and the English Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society) were begun in 1665 to systematically report experimental progress.

This sentiment was also echoed in the first modern piece of copyright legislation: the Statute of Anne from 1710, which recognized that the power of ownership over text had to be moved from the publisher to the author,“…for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books…”

This encouragement was necessary as it was recognized that such books were important for society as a whole. Their importance was not to increase the stature of the writer but to increase available knowledge in society. Copyright was developed for the spread of learning.

In academia today, it seems we are in a slow state of decline from these principles. The Open Access movement does provide a sense of hope, but, in general, the distribution of knowledge in academia today is a sad state of affairs.

The cost of scientific journals is on the rise (the serials crisis). This not only limits individuals from accessing scientific literature but has driven the prices so high that many prestigious university libraries are concerned about their ability to keep them in stock. In 2012, Harvard University published a memorandum on their concerns about journal publishers’ prices. This is the seat of privilege arguing: “We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive.”

In addition to this, the limitations placed on copying and re-use not only limit an article’s readership from accessing and using material but also limits the authors from sharing or re-using the material they themselves created. In December 2013, the major science publisher Elsevier began threatening academics posting their own papers online with legal action (article in Wired).

All hope is not lost! Open access is the way to change this. Please watch the talented Jorge Cham of PhD Comics explain open access in this illustrated video: Open Access Explained! By PHD Comics

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Posted on by Mathias Klang

When the coffee machine refuses you

Digital RIghts Management. It’s a term designed to put you to sleep and make you ignore what is happening around you. Wikipedia says: Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a class of technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and individuals with the intent to control the use of digital content and devices after sale. It’s most common on digital products but things are getting more interesting and we should be paying more attention.

The DRM chair was a fun way of demonstrating the destructive elements involved in applying DRM – especially outside the world of software. The chair would self destruct after being used 8 times. This was a perfect illustration of the way in which technology can be used to hobble the things we surround ourselves with. It was a thoughtful, illustrative mix of art, design and political commentary. It wasn’t supposed to be an instruction manual…

DRM CHAIR from Thibault Brevet on Vimeo.
In Why Copyrighted Coffee May Cripple the Internet of Things Marcus Wohlsen explains how Green Mountain Coffee is adding DRM to its Keurig machines

…CEO Brian Kelley says its new coffee makers will include technology that prevents people from using pods from other companies. The approach has been compared to DRM restrictions that limit the sharing of digital music and video online. But more than just curbing your coffee choices, Green Mountain’s protections portend the kind of closed system that could gut the early promise of the Internet of Things — a promise that hinges on a broad network of digital, connected devices remaking the everyday world.

Cory Doctorow comments

I think Keurig might just be that stupid, greedy company. The reason they’re adding “DRM” to their coffee pods is that they don’t think that they make the obviously best product at the best price, but want to be able to force their customers to buy from them anyway. So when, inevitably, their system is cracked by a competitor who puts better coffee at a lower price into the pods, Keurig strikes me as the kind of company that might just sue.

This is just coffee. Not even particularly interesting coffee but what’s interesting is where we are heading. It is now easy and affordable enough for a seller of coffee to think about DRM. To limit consumers ability to change products, to buy a more affordable or better tasting brand. If it’s cheap enough to do this stupidity with coffee? Why would we imagine a world where this does not happen with everything else? Image a future where the spices you have will not blend with your lunch because they are sold by different corporations.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Free Getty Images have take backsies

It feels like a good day when you wake up to the news that Getty Images is making 35 million images free to use. That’s nice… or is it?

 

The embedd tool is only will allow users to (WSJ)

..include images on websites, such as non-commercial WordPress blogs. The eligible images also come with buttons for Tumblr and Twitter, where a link to the image can be shared. (The image itself doesn’t appear on Twitter, however.)

The obvious question about this is the elusive term non-commercial – attempting to define what is and isn’t commercial is a minefield. But the real question here is one of control. Poynter, referring to the Verge, picks up this point in their reporting of the release. Getty is not giving something for nothing and what they will have is control. Previously images were used without clearing copyright but by providing easy embedding code users will be encouraged to use the images in the ways in which Getty desires.

The new money comes because, once the images are embedded, Getty has much more control over the images. The new embeds are built on the same iframe code that lets you embed a tweet or a YouTube video, which means the company can use embeds to plant ads or collect user information.

The terms of service makes the control pretty clear. Under termination they write:

Notwithstanding any of these Site Terms, Getty Images reserves the right, without notice and in its sole discretion, to terminate your account and/or to block your use of the Site.

If they don’t like you, you don’t get to use the images any more. If you have built up a following based on images they provide – and by doing this provide them with viewers/customers/revenue you still have no rights to use their images if they decide not to share with you any more. As they are embedded images they don’t even have to demand that you take the images down.

This is conditional freedom. This is not a gift but a conditional exchange where those who embed images become the advance marketers of Getty. We have all seen this, this is classic social media thinking. We should know by now:

If you are not paying for it, you are the product being sold. Or an unpaid part of the sales team.

Lets be clear. Getty images has the right to do what they please with these images. I have no problem with their approach. I just want to point out the difference between giving something away while keeping the right to take it back and giving something away.

Compare this with the 100s of millions (if not billions) of images available under Creative Commons licenses. Here the exchange is free and non-revokable. If I use an image that a photographer has licensed under CC. I can use that image forever.

A Big Appetite by Julie Falk CC BY NC

Now this is a free lunch.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Creative Commons Generation 4 Licenses Launched

After a lot of work and hard discussions Creative Commons now launches the fourth version of their licenses. From the CC blog

We proudly introduce our 4.0 licenses, now available for adoption worldwide. The 4.0 licenses — more than two years in the making — are the most global, legally robust licenses produced by CC to date. We have incorporated dozens of improvements that make sharing and reusing CC-licensed materials easier and more dependable than ever before.

Posted on by mklang

Promiscuous plagiarism

Attitudes towards plagiarism have not always been the same. But this story about a signed letter from Rudyard Kipling admitting promiscuous plagiarism kind of made my day.

“I am afraid that all that code in its outlines has been manufactured to meet ‘the necessities of the case’: though a little of it is bodily taken from (Southern) Esquimaux rules for the division of spoils.

“In fact, it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen.

“Very sincerely, Rudyard Kipling.”

The choice of words is also very interesting promiscuously and stolen. Kipling seems to realize the importance of his actions but admits them freely in this letter.

Posted on by mklang

Why government shouldn't have a sense of humor

You’ve heard it before… social media is a cocktail party. You have to be interesting and interact. Lurk at a cocktail party and you will get bored. Even worse your friends will get bored of you and not invite you again. So get stuck in there.

The problem is that this is a metaphor… Being funny at a cocktail might be ok. Being amusing on social media? Not always. Not for the first time I put forward this view at a discussion between politicians and social media scholars in Borås.

Here I argued that tone of voice is important and government bodies should be wary of social media. In particular I used examples of the police in a Swedish town creating and using their own Gangnam Style parody. I tried to explain that this was problematic in relation to copyright law, use of government property and the way in which the police are to be perceived.

Not everyone agreed. They argued funny was good for government and that parodying popular memes could only create a popular buzz. We agreed to disagree. So today, not without a touch of schadenfreude, I read this on Torrentfreak:

Four mayors in Denmark now know what it’s like to become a target of an international recording label out for blood over copyright. The controversy stems from the publication of a YouTube video featuring the officials dancing to Gangnam Style. Universal Music, the company holding the copyright to the original track, have warned the mayors that unless they pay $42,000 by tomorrow, a copyright infringement battle will follow.

Supposing they “chose” to pay rather than going to court my question is who should pay? Should the Danish taxpayer be forced to pay for the mayors’ lack of judgement? Or is it a personal liability? Shouldn’t the mayors been doing something better with their time that attempting to follow the tail end of a dying meme?

So the next time someone questions my ideas about the importance that government bodies not have a sense of humor I shall ask if they can afford their own amusement.

Posted on by mklang

Plagiarism and the desire to share

Finnish media reports that Kristina Isola, a designer at Marimekko has apologized for plagiarizing a painting by Maria Primachenko in her print Metsänväki (“Forest Dwellers”). Plagiarism is not that newsworthy but her motivation caught my eye:

“I didn’t think about copyright or that I appropriated someone else’s creative work. “Forest folk” felt so close to me and I wanted to share that forest feeling with as many people as possible,”

The desire to share objects of beauty is probably one of the causes that drives most of Pinterest. This doesn’t diminish the charges of plagiarism or copyright violation but at what point does the desire to share beauty become socially/legally wrong?

Posted on by mklang

European CC Affiliates Celebrate #cc10 with a Mixtape of Inspiring CC-Licensed Music

This is taken from the Creative Commons blog. It was definitely worth sharing in full so here it is:

Guest blog post by Teresa Nobre, Legal Project Lead at Creative Commons Portugal

One of the opportunities for Creative Commons to continue its rapid evolution is more collaboration between the various affiliates. In September, representatives of CC’s affiliates in 17 different European countries attended a regional meeting and discussed, among other things, Creative Commons’ 10th birthday. Most of the affiliates were already planning activities and events in their own countries; nevertheless, we felt that it was important to find a way to celebrate this important date as a regional network. Since the majority of the affiliates are volunteers, we cannot commit ourselves to carry out as many common actions as we would like. With other priorities in both the national and regional agendas, this activity could not require much planning and execution. The idea of creating a mixtape with Creative Commons–licensed music from around Europe – where each affiliate just had to suggest one or two tracks from her own country – seemed, therefore, a good option and got the general agreement of all those present at the meeting.

Back to our home countries, we relied on the network mailing list to get everyone involved. We did not nominate an official project lead and we did not establish any requirements other than the music being the affiliate’s preferred CC-licensed music. We could have decided to use the mixtape to promote just music licensed with one of CC’s free culture licenses (CC BY and CC BY-SA), but we wanted to get as many affiliates involved as possible and we knew that adding such limitation would only make searching for work more difficult. After all, only a very few of us work in the music industry (the others are lawyers, open content advisors, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, engineers, etc.) and not all of us are familiar with our national CC-licensed music.

Some affiliates went on asking for suggestions to their local communities and some even did contests to find their national CC-licensed music that would make into the compilation. Not all the European affiliates were able to get involved in the project, but those involved were really motivated and even found time to send contributions in respect to other European countries. In total, 16 affiliates worked together, devoting much more time than they initially thought they had available, to make this mixtape happen.

The resulting mixtape showcases the talent of 20 artists from 20 European countries: Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The tracks are from genres as diverse as electronic, folk, classic, drum & bass, rock, ska and tango, and they sound awesome together (despite the fact that they were compiled by a non-musician lawyer!). Give it a listen! It is available for download under various Creative Commons licenses at Free Music Archive, SoundCloud, and the Internet Archive. The album artwork is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Posted on by mklang

CC10 Musicians: Celebrating 10 years of Commons

The great people at CC Korea have now launched the “CC10Musicians” iPhone app (It’s available for download on iTunes itun.es/kr/N9ibJ.i)
The App provides free access to free Creative Commons music. I can only agree with CC Korea
Please download, enjoy, and spread it to as many people around you as possible to let them have a chance to discover the coolest musicians from CC music scene!
The App is launched to coincide with Creative Commons 10 year celebrations – it’s also a very cool way to find and get acquainted with artists who spread their material under Creative Commons licenses.
Congratulations CC Korea! Thanks for this App!
Posted on by mklang