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Seminar: In the Line of Copyright Fire

Uppsala (Sweden) Thursday, September 15th

18.00-20.00 Geijersalen, Engelska Parken: In the Line of Copyright Fire: Culture, Knowledge, and the Information Age

Exacerbated by technological innovation and digitization, the means by which the ownership of informational resources is to be managed in a time of global flows and networks is a question of critical importance to the Information Age. Today, few resources are as valuable as information and knowledge. What are the possible ramifications for civil society, higher education, and cultural institutions in this scenario, where both increased access and increased control struggle for domination? Archives, Libraries, and Museums are organizations that together with their users face a number of challenges in respect to copyright. In what sense do private and public interests collide when it comes to the dissemination of information, knowledge, and culture today? How can we make images and text available in a way that will be conducive rather than detrimental to future research? Is copyright obsolete or still viable?

These and other questions relating to the nexus between culture, knowledge, and property, will be explored in this panel discussion hosted by the Department of Archival Science, Library- and Information Science and Museology (ALM). Confirmed panelists include: Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, Associate Professor, Swedish Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow 2002-2006, the Department of ALM, Uppsala University; Mathias Klang, Project Lead for the Swedish Creative Commons license and Graduate Student at the Department of Informatics, Göteborg University; Matthew Rimmer, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Australian National University and member of the Copyright and Intellectual Property Advisory Group of the Australian Library and Information Association; Jette Sandahl, Director, Museum of World Culture, Göteborg.

All welcome!

For further information, please contact Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, ehw@abm.uu.se

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The Demise of the Public Domain

“Within every culture, there is a public domain?a lawyer-free zone, unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of anyone else.”

Lessig predicts that the public domain will be unable to survive the next three decades… Unfortunately I think he is right.

Foreign Policy: The Public Domain

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Copyright and Swedish Universities

Some notes from a recent discussion

First lets start off with the fundamental difference between Copyright in Swedish and Anglo/American law. Anglo/American law views copyright as the right to copy or reproduce. Swedish law sees copyright (upphovsrätt roughly translates as the right of origin). This foundamental difference creates problems when attempting to implement or discuss copyright in the different legal regimes.

Those people within universities which may be involved in copyright discussions can be one of three groups of people.

Students
Students can be funded by the university but are not seen as employees for the purpose of copyright. Students however are viewed as â??quasi-employeesâ?? when the discussion of work environment is discussed in the university â?? however this has no bearing on copyright issues.

Therefore the student is not seen as an employee. All/everything produced during his/her period of study belongs to him/her. The university has no copyright in essays, software, artwork or more. This can naturally be changed by contract â?? but then the student must be compensated in some way.

Phd Students (â??selfâ?? funded/funded by the university)
Often viewed as employees. They have the trappings of the employee. Office space, telephone & equipment. However for the discussion of employment relationship the Phd project does not count as work.

The â??selfâ?? employed Phd student is not seen as an employee. All/everything produced during his/her period of study belongs to him/her. The university has no copyright in essays, software, artwork or more. This can naturally be changed by contract â?? but then the student must be compensated in some way. This can be the case of research projects where the Phd student participates.

Phd students funded by the university may be seen as employees. These students are therefore employees who are being paid to produce something for the university. The product belongs to the university (not the moral rights since the moral rights always belong to the author). Traditionally universities in Sweden do not exercise their right to the product. Any attempt to exercise this right must be explicit and based upon contract.

Researchers (â??selfâ?? funded/funded by the university)
The â??selfâ?? employed researcher is not seen as an employee. All/everything produced during his/her period of study belongs to him/her. The university has no copyright in essays, software, artwork or more. This can naturally be changed by contract â?? but then the researcher must be compensated in some way.

Researchers funded by the university may be seen as employees. These researchers are therefore employees who are being paid to produce something for the university. The product belongs to the university (not the moral rights since the moral rights always belong to the author). Traditionally universities in Sweden do not exercise their right to the product. Any attempt to exercise this right must be explicit and based upon contract.

Employees
This group includes all employees who are being paid to produce something for the university. The product belongs to the university (not the moral rights since the moral rights always belong to the author). Traditionally universities in Sweden do not exercise their right to the product. Any attempt to exercise this right must be explicit and based upon contract.

A discussion can naturally be carried out as to what it is that is the employees are being employed to produce.

Additional questions of interest

Access to public information
Any and all material handed in to the university for grading (essays, exams & phd thesisâ??) are considered to be public information. Such public information is available to all who would like to read it (a cost for copying and sending may be levied).

Competing work
Employees at universities have a duty to be loyal and therefore should not carry out work which competes with the goals of the university. This may include abusing positions of trust by producing teaching material which they sell as compulsory material to students. The latter is not prohibited but may be frowned upon.

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GPL in Europe

“The GPLâ??s major problem is that the right of communication to the public is not provided explicitly amongst the granted rights, and that a clause limits furthermore the granted rights to what is explicitly provided by the license. Moreover, the GPL is known for being the most viral license ever, whereas massive spreading through dynamic linkage is not the aim of the European Commission.”

This is a quote from a Study into Open Source Licensing of software developed by The European Commission entitled “Report on Open Source Licensing of software developed by The European Commission (applied to the CIRCA solution) 16th December, 2004” by Séverine Dusollier, Philippe Laurent & Patrice-Emmanuel Schmitz.
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/2623/5585#eupl

Right to communication
The major problem with the GPL is that the right to communication to the public is not explicitly provided in the license?

“The right to communication to the public”? I am unsure which right the authors are referring to. However the GPL is explicit in that once software is licensed under the GPL the source code must be available and the software itself can be used for any purpose.

Most viral
“Moreover, the GPL is known for being the most viral license ever, whereas massive spreading through dynamic linkage is not the aim of the European Commission.” – Once again I am unsure what the authors are concerned about. The point of article 2 (the viral or vaccination effect) is not “massive spreading through dynamic linkage” (which sounds terrifying even if I dont know what it means). The viral effect entails that you cannot take code which has been released under the GPL (made free for all) and use it in part in code which you do not intend to make freely available for all. Simple – but not scary.

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Proposed penalties – ensuring IP rights

As part of a proposal intended to protect IP rights. The penalties for infringing IP rights propsed by this directive include:
– a permanent or temporary ban on engaging in commercial activities;
– a ban on access to public assistance or subsidies;

The penalties are draconian since even drug dealers are not punished this harshly…

Background

COM (2005) 276 – 1 Proposal for a EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND COUNCIL DIRECTIVE on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights
http://europa.eu.int/prelex/detail_dossier_real.cfm?CL=en&DosId=193131

Penalties Article 4 section 2:

For the offences referred to in Article 3, the Member States shall provide that the following penalties are also available in appropriate cases:
(a) destruction of the goods infringing an intellectual property right;
(b) total or partial closure, on a permanent or temporary basis, of the
establishment used primarily to commit the offence;
(c) a permanent or temporary ban on engaging in commercial activities;
(d) placing under judicial supervision;
(e) judicial winding-up;
(f) a ban on access to public assistance or subsidies;
(g) publication of judicial decisions.

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Berlin Declaration progress in Sweden (in Swedish)

SUHF:s (Sveriges universitets- och högskoleförbund) styrelse antog vid sitt möte den 8 juni 2005 rekommendationer med anledning av undertecknandet av Berlindeklarationen.

1. Införa en policy som starkt rekommenderar att deras forskare deponerar en kopia av varje publicerad artikel i ett öppet, digitalt arkiv och
2. Uppmuntra forskarna att publicera sina forskningsartiklar i fritt tillgängliga vetenskapliga tidskrifter när en lämplig sådan existerar och ge det stöd som krävs för att detta ska vara möjligt.

Bakgrund

Berlindeklarationen innebär:
â?¢ encouraging our researchers/grant recipients to publish their work according to the principles of the open access paradigm.
â?¢ encouraging the holders of cultural heritage to support open access by providing their resources on the Internet.
â?¢ developing means and ways to evaluate open access contributions and online-journals in order to maintain the standards of quality assurance and good scientific practice.
â?¢ advocating that open access publication be recognized in promotion and tenure evaluation.
â?¢ advocating the intrinsic merit of contributions to an open access infrastructure by software tool devel-opment, content provision, metadata creation, or the publication of individual articles

Under våren 2005 antogs två rekommendationer:
In order to implement the Berlin Declaration institutions should:
1. implement a policy to require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository and
2. encourage their researchers to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provide the support to enable that to happen.

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Open Access Journal

Copyright, a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal led by a renowned editorial team, seeks papers on all aspects of copyright in the Internet age. The journal features a rapid review and publication time while maintaining rigorous standards regarding the quality of the work. Copyright focuses on detailed research and case studies vetted by peer-review; opinion pieces and shorter communications are also invited and will be accepted at the editors’ discretion. Because the journal is open-access, the author retains the copyright to his or her works.

Copyright

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Ny bok från Piratbyrån

Den 25 juli lanseras piratantologin Copy Me med en releasefest på Elverket på �stermalm i Stockholm.

Texterna är huvudsakligen hämtade från Piratbyråns artikelsektion och bjuder på en mångfald av perspektiv kring piratkopiering. Från Michel Foucault till datorspelens historia, från Friedrich Hayek till Public Enemy; det är mycket som inte fått plats i tryckpressmedias rapportering, där upphovsrättsindustrin ofta tillåtits sätta dagordningen.

– Med Copy Me vill vi bredda piratdebatten frÃ¥n antipiraternas klumpiga problemformuleringar till en seriös diskussion kring den aktuella tekniken och kulturen, säger PiratbyrÃ¥ns Rasmus Fleischer. Boken kommer inom kort.

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Open Standards & Open Source Norway

Norway is working to understand the importance of open standards and open source in the public sector.

A working group within the Ministry of Modernisation has produced a report on the use of open IT standards and open source code in the public sector. Report PDF.

The Minister of Modernisation (now that is a cool title!) Morten Andreas Meyer adopted an open source priority approach in the eNorge 2009 plan. Norway will be holding a hearing on the topic on the 15 September. Høring – Bruk av Ã¥pne standarder og Ã¥pen kildekode i offentlig sektor.

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