The European Union is planning to create a new Europe-wide licensing scheme for music royalty collection and airplay compensation. Reuters reported this week that it could be ready to go to public consultation as early as this month.
At the moment royalties are collected by a different agency for each country, and in some countries there are multiple agencies. This makes creating a Europe wide online music store something of a nightmare.
Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio – www.sr.se) is the public service radio broadcaster in Sweden. The company is owned by a foundation and is entirely funded by licence fees. Advertising is not permitted. Swedish Radio is proud of its public service tradition. One of the goals of Swedish Radio is that the programs shall be of interest for a wide audience across the country and made available to listeners in the whole country.
(Programmen skall rikta sig till och vara tillgängliga för publiken i hela landet samt i skälig omfattning tillgodose skiftande behov och intressen hos landets befolkning.)
The purpose of Public Service Radio, as defined by SR themselves is that everyone, independent of sex, age, geographical residence or cultural background should be able to find something of value among SRâ??s programming.
To further fulfil these goals SR has adopted digital technology and the Internet as a mode of infrastructure. It is possible to listen to the radio online and to find and download recent programs, as well as programs from the archives.
Unfortunately SR fallen (inadvertently?) into the trap of using proprietary software. To be able to listen to SRâ??s audio files the user must have Realplayer version 7 (or later) installed on her computer. The user has a choice between using either the free version or buying the program.
However using Realplayer presents the user with something of a dilemma. The first problem arises from the fact that the free version of the software is not entirely easy to find. For those who are unaware that the free version exists the alternative is to purchase the software.
The second problem is that Realplayer has serious integrity issues. They have been sued for privacy violations more than once. For those users who wish to protect their integrity Realplayer is not a viable alternative.
The third problem arises if the user wishes not to support or use proprietary software. Free Software, the alternative approach presented by the Free Software Foundation is an important part of an open technological infrastructure and many who support the need for Free Software alternatives are not able to listen to SRâ??s audio files since they are not available in non-proprietary alternatives.
Audio compression formats based upon non-patented, open source solutions (Such as ogg vorbis – www.vorbis.com) should be the format of choice for large publicly funded radio stations such as Sveriges Radio.
Using such formats Swedish Radio will promote open formats for listening and become part of an open society instead of providing support for a private corporation lock-in.
This post therefore argues:
1. Swedish Radio should not be promoting the product of a single manufacturer.
2. Swedish Radio should not be promoting products which are used to gather data about the user.
3. Swedish Radio should be supporting free and open formats.
Myndigheten för Sveriges nätuniversitet samt BIBSAM vid KB kommer att hålla ett heldagsseminarium i Stockholm den 21 september, där man ska diskutera tillgång till digitala lärresurser vid högskolorna. Creative Commons Sverige är inbjudna att tala.
Detaljprogram publiceras i slutet på augusti på NU och KBs hemsidor (http://www.myndigheten.netuniversity.se/ och http://www.kb.se/bibsam/bibsam.htm).
Abstract
The Creative Commons (CC) project was developed to help creative people share copyrighted material. This was done by creating a licensing scheme that could be applied, understood and communicated by non-lawyers. The project was launched in 2001 and took inspiration from the GNU General Public License. The first stage was the release of a set of copyright licenses free for public use. Following this CC has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, under certain conditions.
The success of CC has led to its spread over many different legal jurisdictions and its application in many new areas. The purpose of this talk will be to briefly explain the CC licensing system and the use of meta-data in the licensing. In addition to this the internationalisation of CC will be presented from the viewpoint of the work of CC in Sweden.
Målet är fri tillgång till vetenskaplig information på Internet – eller uttryckt med en engelsk term: open access.
Vetenskapsrådet ställer sig nu formellt bakom denna vision genom att skriva under en internationell deklaration för open access.
– Resultat från forskning som finansierats med statliga medel ska vara tillgängliga för alla, inte bara de som har råd att betala, menar Pär Omling, generaldirektör för Vetenskapsrådet.
En grundläggande princip inom forskningen är ett fritt informationsutbyte och en maximal spridning av forskningsresultat. Med detta som bakgrund tillsammans med den allt snabbare utvecklingen av Internet formulerades för snart två år sedan Berlindeklarationen.
Hittills har ett femtiotal organisationer, de flesta europeiska, med universitets- och forskningsanknytning skrivit under. Vetenskapsrådet blir den andra svenska organisationen efter Sveriges universitets- och högskoleförbund, SUHF, som undertecknar deklarationen.
Undertecknarna åtar sig bl a att uppmuntra forskare att publicera sina resultat fritt tillgängligt på Internet, att utveckla metoder för att kvalitetssäkra online-publicering samt att verka för att öppen publicering blir meriterande vid utvärdering och tjänstetillsättning.
Öppnare och snabbare
Förutom den demokratiska aspekten är en stor fördel med open access att den s k publiceringsprocessen kan gå fortare. I dag kan det ta år från det att första versionen av en forskningsartikel är färdig tills den slutligen är färdiggranskad och publiceras i någon av de vetenskapliga tidskrifterna.
Frågetecken finns dock: hur ska forskarnas rättigheter till sina egna texter hanteras? Och kanske viktigast: hur ska den vetenskapliga kvaliteten garanteras? Det vetenskapliga redaktörssystem som dagens tidskrifter använder betyder bl a att forskningsartiklarna genomgår en omfattande kvalitetsgranskning.
Handlingsplan i höst
På Vetenskapsrådet inleds nu ett arbete med att se hur man som finansiär konkret kan arbeta för open access. Till hösten, inför nästa års utlysning av forskningsmedel vill generaldirektör Pär Omling att det ska finnas en konkret handlingsplan.
– Vi som finansiär skulle ju kunna ändra policyn när vi tittar på meritvärdering, samtidigt ska inte kvaliteten på forskningen som finansieras kunna ifrågasättas. Det här är en diskussion vi måste föra tillsammans i forskarsamfundet, i ett internationellt sammanhang.
The workshop that will explore, in as wide a possible a way, the nexus between information, knowledge, and property, taking as point of departure the fact that information and knowledge have become valuable resources of the knowledge-based society. What are the possible ramifications for civil society and public institutions such as libraries in this scenario, where both increased access and increased control struggle for domination? The workshop should be of interest to all graduate students whose work touch upon information access, dissemination, and control within this larger social/economic/cultural context.
Free internet access to thousands of clips from public service radio and TV programmes is a step closer after the launch of the Creative Archive Licence.
The BBC, Channel 4, the British Film Institute (BFI) and The Open University (OU) launched the scheme on Wednesday.
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Online archive moves step closer
The case involved software written in part by Drew Technologies, Inc., to which others contributed, in reliance upon the GPL. DrewTech, an engineering firm in Michigan, develops custom vehicle communications solutions for the automobile industry. DrewTech released the software at issue on SourceForge, under the GNU General Public License (“GPL”).
The EU is developing privacy guidelines for the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) technology. A European Commission advisory group, known as a Article 29 Working Party, is conducting a public consultation on the emerging technology.
Arising from the success of the Free Software/Open Source movements and reacting against developments in intellectual property the Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org) was formed to provide the means for establishing a digital creative commons. Its purpose was to create a useable web application that would enable creators of copyrightable material to dedicate these to the public domain or to release them under certain conditions. The Creative Commons licenses are not designed for software, even though they take their original inspiration from Free Software Licenses, but are intended to be used for diverse intellectual products such as: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc. The goal of the Creative Commons is to make more material accessible online and to make all material cheaper and easier to use.
We have at best a vague understanding of the term commons. When applied to the mainstream western understanding of property the term is associated with wasteful and damaging behaviour (cf Hardin 1968). Most of our distrust of the concept of commons stems from our understanding that property. To us property is most efficiently used if it is maintained as a private property, as opposed to property which is either owned collectively or claimed by no-one. There is, however, a growing acceptance of alternative views on property which do not condemn the commons (cf Shiva 2002).
Property today implies exclusive privilege of the thing in question. Despite the difficulties in attributing property rights to intangible objects the legal institutes of copyright and patents have been created to create exclusive property-like relationships and grant property rights on certain symbols and images. A main characteristic of the core European legal systems is the predominance of private ownership. In fact the Western legal systems regard individual ownership as the norm, derogations from which must be explained. The western view of property has led to an increase in the privatisation of commodities which traditionally were held to be a commons.
One of the frequently cited criticisms of the commons is the ?tragedy? of the commons (Hardin, 1968). The main disappearance of the European commons occurred during the 17th century with the enclosure movements. These movements were legitimised by philosophers such as Locke (1998), whose view that idle nature was wasteful and the adding of labour to land was enough to create property. Property occurred since ??every man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.?
With this the stage was set for the commodisation of nature. Nature was seen as a neutral element and the mixing of this neutral element with property, naturally became the property of the owner of the labour. ?Whatsoever then he removes out of the State of Nature hath provided, and left it in, he has mixed his Labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property.? Locke has since then been used to legitimise the creation of new property rights in tangibles and intangibles.
The loss of the commons is today seen as a positive step. The commons as Hardin (1968) pictures them are a pasture, free for all to use, where cattle graze freely. Under economic theory the individual cattle owners will all strive to maximise their own stock and this will lead to the destruction of the pasture due to overuse. Hardin sees the open-access system as a place without rules (legal or social) were all actors strive to maximise their own economic wealth. However, for Hardin?s tragedy to occur several erroneous assumptions about the commons must be made (Shiva, 2002). Hardin assumes that all human interaction is based upon competition and not cooperation, that property held in commons is unregulated, that communities dependent upon the commons do not have social regulations and that group ownership is per definition an inferior solution. Hardin views the creation of private property as the most efficient way to avoid the tragedy, considering all the environmental disasters we have experienced only those who are particularly blind can still cling to this view.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the purpose and need for institutions such as the Creative Commons and attempt to ascertain its international impact. To be able to do so, this paper begins by studying the concepts, roles and interaction of private property, the public domain and the commons. Discussing how and why the critique of the commons, as applied to digital products, is flawed. The paper then discusses the role of the commons in the creation and spread of intellectual property online.