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

Wed Mar 21 15:11:34 UTC 2012

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:48 PM, john wilbanks <jtw at del-fi.org> wrote:

> We must think *strategically* and not *academically*.
>
> Agreed,
Jenny Molloy, Diane Cabell, Laura Newman and I have finished putting
together our response to Hargreaves. Hopefully this will appear in the next
hour or so

> 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.
>

Agreed. It is university contracts and publisher robots that stop me
textmining.

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

Agreed. My own feeling is that we need more than libre OA - we need a
realisation that this is an area we-the-commons, not the publishers,
regulate and I believe we need a clear demarcation of what we can and
cannot do and enforcement when we do what we are allowed to.

> 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.
>

We need a political solution where the power is in the hands of the
commons. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Certainly not the publishers. But
we manage this in many other areas, medicine, water, education, etc. Not
always as well as we might but a great deal better than the unregulated
digital land grab we have seen.

>
> IANAL, YMMV, etc.
>
> jtw
>
>
>
-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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