Next Legal Watch Paper is on the topic of Science Commons.
What would you like to see covered in there? Any burning questions? Now’s your chance!
By the way, if Science Commons is something that interests you, we have John Wilbanks (VP of Science Commons) speaking at the 4th International Digital Curation Conference tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll see you there. And for those who can’t make it – I’ll blawg about it very soon.
'Ownership of data' – uuuughh! The phrase gives me a shiver just thinking about it. A contentious area rife with complication, confusion and misunderstanding. That said, a super important area, especially for those of us interested in curation and scientific progress in general (perhaps less so for a landscape gardener say).
I was reading the Oaklaw report ‘Building the Infrastructure for Data Access and Reuse in Collaborative Research’ and noticed a couple of interesting pages (‘Chapter 2: Key Concepts’ Paras 2.16 – 2.22 if you’re interested).
The report looked at what is meant by the term “ownership” in relation to data. It identified nine different parties who might claim rights in data. These were:
Your thoughts? What do you think of this list? What does ownership of data mean to you? Do you consider yourself an ‘owner’ of data? And if so, what is your relationship to that data? Am I missing the point and it’s all ridiculously simple?
All input welcomed and appreciated.
Following on from my earlier post about the settlement between Google and the AAP I read an interesting analysis of this from Fred von Lohmann at the EFF. Take a read yourself.
Two areas of particular interest to me are the impact on the doctrine of fair use (the U.S. equivalent of fair dealing) and the impact on privacy. Fred’s analysis covers both of these with notable paragraphs being:
“...this outcome is plainly second-best from the point of view of those who believe Google would have won the fair use question at the heart of the case. A legal ruling that scanning books to provide indexing and search is a fair use would have benefited the public by setting a precedent on which everyone could rely, thus limiting publishers' control over the activities of future book scanners. In contrast, only Google gets to rely on this settlement agreement, and the agreement embodies many concessions that a fair user shouldn't have to make."(For a short analysis of Google’s Fair Use argument see this EFF posting from back in 2005)
“Privacy: The agreement apparently envisions a world where Google keeps all of the electronic books that you "purchase" on an "electronic shelf" for you. In other words, in order to read the books you've paid for, you have to log into Google. Google is also likely to keep track of which books you browse (at least if you're logged in). This is a huge change in the privacy we traditionally enjoy in libraries and bookstores, where nobody writes down "Fred von Lohmann entered the store at 19:42:08 and spent 2.2 minutes on page 28 of 0-486-66980-7, 3.1 minutes on page 29, and 2.8 minutes on page 30." If Google becomes the default place to search, browse, and buy books, it will be able to keep unprecedented track of what you read, how you read it, and collate that with all the other information it has about you. Does the agreement contain ironclad protections for user privacy?”
In the news today…
Google and the Association of American Publishers (the AAP), who were suing Google to stop the Google Library Project, have today announced a settlement agreement. The agreement is on behalf of a wide range of authors and publishers worldwide and will expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and written materials.
It has been reported that:
“The agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form, by significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search, an ambitious effort to make millions of books searchable via the Web. The agreement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright owners, provides an efficient means for them to control how their intellectual property is accessed online and enables them to receive compensation for online access to their works.”
You can find more details of this in Peter Suber’s post on the Open Access News blog or on the AAP's own website.
Image by manfrys on Flickr BY-SA
The call for papers and posters for the SCRIPT-ed 2009 conference 'Governance of New Technologies: The Transformation of Medicine, Information Technology and Intellectual Property’ closes in just over three weeks time on Sat 15th November. The conference organisers are looking for 300 word abstracts at this stage.
The international, inter-disciplinary conference will focus on evolving and emerging technologies and new-technology-driven practices and their impact on the overlapping fields of (1) healthcare, (2) information technology and (3) intellectual property. It will take place in Edinburgh on the 29th to 31st March 2009.
You can find further information on the SCRIPTed website.
The presentations and reports from the JISC Rights & Repositories meeting held in
London last month can now be found online in the Repositories and Preservation section of the JISC website
The resources include PowerPoint presentations and top tips documents covering topics such as negotiating with rights holders, risk management and choosing the right licence.
Jonathan Gray of the Open Knowledge Foundation has set up a new mailing list for discussions/announcements relating to open science.
The new list aims to bring together people interested in open science across different domains - with a particular focus on open access and open data (cf. Science Commons’ Principles for open science).
You can read Jonathan’s blog post about the new list here
…and you can sign up for the list here.
