[open-science] [SCHOLCOMM] Libre open access, copyright, patent law, and, other intellectual property matters

[john wilbanks]

We must think *strategically* and not *academically*.

It isn't helpful to frame the text mining debate in copyright terms. 
Text mining is a contractual problem, not a copyright problem, but 
because publishers insist on layering text mining prohibitions on top of 
copyright licenses, they have conflated the two in a way that libre open 
access can untangle.

Here's an example of how elsevier does this, but they're hardly alone.
http://www.mpdl.mpg.de/nutzbed/MPG_Elsevier.pdf

Either they have to stop bundling prohibitions on text mining with 
licenses, stop using DRM to enforce prohibitions, and stop chilling bulk 
downloading by text miners without threatening lawsuits (which then we 
can use your arguments to defend, in court, against their army of 
lawyers, using our massive financial advantage as an open movement 
against a bunch of multinational corporations with arms-dealing 
resources), or we need libre OA to include text mining as a strategic 
goal of the overall OA movement.

For me the choice is pretty clear. Expecting publishers to unbundle text 
mining from their licensing agreements and eliminate DRM is magical 
thinking, and the primary legal use arguments for text mining are only 
good as defenses *after* one has been sued, not prospective rights one 
can claim to prevent injunction. See lessig: fair use is the right to 
call a lawyer and nothing more.

We need explicit rights to text mine that obviate the language 
publishers use to prevent it. Leveraging copyright law to prevent them 
from adding those preventions is better strategy than planning to beat 
back the copyright cartel in court, IMHO.

IANAL, YMMV, etc.

jtw

> 2012/3/20 Heather Morrison<hgmorris at sfu.ca>:
>> A post on libre open access, copyright, patent law, and other intellectual
>> property matters. In brief, I argue that text and data mining materials on
>> the open web does not require special permissions. This has implications for
>> understanding what needs to happen to make libre open access a reality.
>> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2012/03/copyright-for-expression-of-ideas.html
>>
>> Comments welcome.