[OpenGLAM] Content Trafficking v.3

Thu Sep 12 14:48:00 UTC 2013

I agree with Heath.  The use of intentionally polarizing and pejorative
language has another potential downside in addition to antagonizing the
very people you're trying to influence -- it's likely to discourage the
involvement of potential contributors who believe in more constructive
approaches.

Tom

On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 4:00 PM, heath rezabek <heath.rezabek at gmail.com>wrote:

> I think it's worth asking ourselves what the desired outcome is. Knowing
> that will clarify the likelihood that the language we use will aid that
> cause or simply cauterize the debate.
>
> I also tend to believe that divisionary language is bound to result mainly
> in sharper divisions.  Additionally, if any work whatsoever was done on the
> material, that work cost the institution money.  Institutions can't
> always afford to reorient whole workflows to free up content which they've
> spent funding in order to provide some kind of access to, without at least
> some suggestion of an alternate workflow that would allow them to vent
> their derivative PD works as purely PD.
>
> I'm not articulating very well; it just seems to me that offering a 'best
> practices for preserving public domain status for the public good' document
> would be a better strategy than branding institutions who may not have
> workflows in place to do so.
>
> But again, it all depends on the desired outcome.
>
> Curmudgeonly,
>
> - Heath
>   Tx Ambassador for the OKFN
>
>
> On Wednesday, September 11, 2013, Sarah Stierch wrote:
>
>> True: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trafficking
>>
>> Revolution can begin with the reclaiming and redefining of things. But, I
>> understand if that's not appropriate in this case.
>>
>> I'm not sure if "copyright overreaching" works either, as if it's public
>> domain we're not really overreaching copyright. Hmmm
>>
>> -S
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Ed Rodley <ed_rodley at pem.org> wrote:
>>
>> I'd have to agree with Beat.  Every other kind of trafficking I can think
>> of is a straight-up crime. One could make the case that some of the ways
>> institutions try to monetize PD content are fraudulent, but they're not in
>> the same league as arms, narcotics and human trafficking. Trying to declare
>> it as such seems overly shrill. Also, traffickers know that what they do is
>> illegal and they organize to circumvent the law. That is not the case with
>> many institutions, which struggle just to undersand how titanically the
>> digital landscape has changed.  "Content trafficking" isn't just
>> polarizing, it has *only* pejorative connotations. I can't see how we'd
>> hope have any constructive dialogue with institutions we'd branded thus.
>> Terms like copyright overreaching seem much more accurate.
>>
>> Ed
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 8:54 AM, Estermann Beat <beat.estermann at bfh.ch>wrote:
>>
>>
>> Personally, I’m not very happy with the term “content trafficking” as it
>> seems unnecessarily polarizing to me. And I wonder whether the kind of
>> black-and-white thinking implied by the term “content trafficking” and the
>> definition that you suggest, will lead to the best possible results in
>> terms of “content liberation”.
>>
>>
>> The word "trafficking" is polarizing in general in this day and age
>> ("human trafficking" being the most notable example), though it does
>> successfully add urgency to the matter, and in a day and age (again) where
>> laws and ideas of openness are evolving quickly, perhaps that urgency is
>> needed.
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I don’t find it particularly revolting if institutions partly withhold
>> public domain works from the public domain if this is necessary to recoup a
>> significant part of the costs related to digitization and enhancement of
>> metadata. Some of the Google Digitization Partnerships would probably fall
>> into this category: Public domain works are made available under some sort
>> of a non-commercial use-agreement during 10-12 years; after that the GLAM
>> institution is free to make the original scans available as real “public
>> domain” works. Being able to full-text-search and consult the documents
>> online now with some usage restrictions might be preferable to waiting for
>> another 10-20 years, before the GLAM institutions actually is able to raise
>> funds from other sources to finance the digitization of the works.****
>>
>> **
>>
>>
>> I *do* find it rather revolting. I've worked at institutions who have
>> paid for employee positions based on the selling of public domain works. It
>> just shows that there is a lack of funding on the donor side for
>> digitization programs. If donors were giving money to digitize, and provide
>> free access to PD collections maybe this wouldn't be a problem. But,
>> development departments are generally clueless (at least in the United
>> States) about copyright discussions and most donors are as well. It's going
>> to take a special type of donor to destroy the power that Google has over
>> these organizati
>>
>>
>
> --
> Heath Rezabek // labs.vessel.cc
> Long Now Foundation (Intern) // Manual for Civilization Project //
> longnow.org
> Icarus Interstellar // FarMaker Team // icarusinterstellar.org
> Open Knowledge Foundation // Texas Ambassador for the OKFn // okfn.org
>
>
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