By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Museums and Misleading Copyright
On one of my recent visits to Ottawa I has a sustained argument with the curators at the National Gallery over their refusal to allow photographs to be taken in the 'Canadian Wing' due - I was told - to copyright concerns. My protestations that th majority of the art in the wing was now in the public domain fell on deaf ears. So much for my intent to create a 'Canadian Art' collection on Flickr. Michael Geist raises the issue of such misleading claims to own copyright in a current column. "Many institutions," he writes, "go much further charging 'surrogate copyright fees' or 'user's fees' for public domain works or deploy technology to limit the potential uses of digitized versions of those works." They claim that their reproductions are copyright protected. yt th Supreme Court states, "For a work to be "original" within the meaning of the Copyright Act, it must be more than a mere copy of another work." I'm sympathetic with the museums' need for more funding. More...
Crowd Sourcing Against Perpetual Copyright
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Crowd Sourcing Against Perpetual Copyright
I read the editorial in the NY Times proposing that copyrights last forever and dismissed it as a ridiculous argument. Basically, the author's claim is that the expiration of copyright is akin to the government seizure of private property. Which is ridiculous, since copyright, insofar as it is property, exists only because of government intervention. Anyhow, in all the discussion over this editorial I am surprised to note that commentators have missed the author's primary intent - to reframe the debate by putting perpetual copyright on the table as a viable option. Which it never was until now. And all of a sudden life plus 75 years looks pretty good, by comparison. The campaign by Lessig and others to respond to the argument has the effect of embracing the new frame. More...
World Book and Copyright Day
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. World Book and Copyright Day
Monday is 'World Book and Copyright Day' and is an example of UNESCO taking exactly the wrong turn. "There can be no book development without copyright," says UNESCO's Director-General Koichiro Matsuura. This, of course, is a crock, as people are proving with projects as varied as Wikipedia and open publishing on Lulu. The of the Open Educational Resources (OER) contemplated by UNESCO at its various forums. He writes, "The dual nature of these products of the publishing industry, which are both goods for sale and works of the mind, has repeatedly been emphasized. Much has also been said about the book as the driving force behind a wide array of income-generating activities..." If this is what he thinks, how seriously can we take UNESCO on OERs. More...
Copyright Directive webinar series by LIBER Europe: 22 October, 4 and 19 November
The Iron Cage of Copyright
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Iron Cage of Copyright
Longtime readers will know that I have always been a reluctant supporter of Creative Commons (it shouldn't be necessary; the default should be non-commercial sharing, while commercial ownership and use constitute exceptions) and have expressed a vocal dislike for the legalese that comes with it (for example, the recent kerfuffle over the definition of 'commercial'). I agree with this sentiment. More...
US Copyright Lobby Out-of-Touch
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. US Copyright Lobby Out-of-Touch
In the latest report from a U.S. intellectual property lobby group, Michael geist notes, " what is most noteworthy about the IIPA effort is that dozens of countries - indeed most of the major global economies in the developed and developing world - are singled out for criticism." One wonders, he writes, who it is that is really out of step here. "Countries singled out for criticism should not be deceived into thinking that their laws are failing to meet an international standard, no matter what US lobby groups say". More...
The End of Captain Copyright
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The End of Captain Copyright
Access Copyright is killing Captain Copyright, a misleading propaganda campaign on file sharing aimed at Canadian children. For teachers who ordered "literally hundreds" of Captain Copyright packs, Michael Geist recommends Copyright, copyleft and everything in between, a multimedia curriculum on copyright alternatives in South Africa. More...
Copyright Policy
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Copyright Policy
If you are involved in copyright and licensing in Canada, you don't want to miss this collection of studies, recently made public by Canadian Heritage. As Michael Geist notes, the list was recently released by the Copyright Policy Branch (and I echo his kudos to the Branch for doing this). There's a lot to absorb, but among the studies you'll want to be sure to look at Economic Impact of WIPO Ratification on Private Copying Regime ("the new outflow is from Canadian consumers to foreign copyright holders, and the new inflow is from foreign consumers to Canadian copyright holders") and also The Economic Impact of Canadian Copyright Industries - Sectoral Analysis" - take some time and look at the graphs documenting the trade deficit (outflow to foreign copyright holders) and ponder what the impact of exaggerating that deficit - through more stringent legislation and ratification of WIPO - would be. More...
Copyright, Publishing, and Scholarship
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Copyright, Publishing, and Scholarship
This paper summarizes the work of the "Zwolle Group" initiative over thje last five years. This group was formed to develop and share "guidance for faculty authors, publishers, librarians, and other stakeholders who are seeking to improve their management of copyright issues." The members of the group took an approach that emphasizes the "balancing" of stakeholder interests. This suffered from two flaws. First, it was not clear that stakeholder interests were properly represented. In the chart of stakeholder interests, for example, the 'general public' is woefully understated - surely it would have some interest to balance the "maximize revenue" stated by publishers? But no, the public is depicted as having no view on this issue. The second flaw is inherent in the employment of a stakeholder approach at all. Should all of the players be at the table? In particular, do we need to continue to take into account publisher interests in further discussions. More...
New copyright law will benefit South Africans with disabilities
South Africa’s current copyright law was enacted 41 years ago. The Copyright Act No. 98 of 1978 had no provisions for people with disabilities – and that hasn’t changed in more than four decades. More...