Should Copyright of Academic Works Be Abolished? 349
Dr_Ken writes to mention recent coverage of a Harvard Cyber-Law study on Techdirt that analyzes the uses of copyright in the academic world. Some are claiming that the applications of copyright in academia are stifling and that we should perhaps go so far as to abolish copyright in the academic world entirely. "I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone."
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:1, Interesting)
"For one thing I bet 80% of the research has been funded by taxpayer dollars."
And you'd probably bet wrong.
Unless you mean, at least 80$ of research has SOME tax payer dollars in it, of which I'd say closer to 99%.
At the same time, most businesses have been funded by taxpayer $$$s at some point. Tax incentives, small business assistance, credits for something or other...the ability to donate large amounts of money to pet causes that generate a lot of advertising without having to pay their fair of taxes.
I can guarantee you, almost everything is funded by taxpayers at some point and htis is a good thing because it keeps progress moving.
Research? I get my lights paid for by the gov't, but other than that, 99% of my research comes from donations from private multicorps that want a share of my research. This is how most is done...
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:2, Interesting)
Possibly, but we won't know unless we find.. omg.. a citation for your statement.
Moreover, the journals that publish these papers ARE in the business of making themselves money. Sure, they may be non-profit, but they sure do want to protect the content that they funded to print up for everyone so that they can continue to do so.
Speaking broadly, I hate, as a student, that so many papers are locked behind the websites for journals and I cannot access these to even read for free! What the hell?
It sure is stifling my ability to learn.
Thankfully most academics, including professors everywhere, make copies of these papers available to their students to study.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
It shouldn't be abolished, but fair use should no longer be restricted.
I'll take this further: it cannot be abolished, because in this field in particular, tools to combat outright plagiarism are pretty important. But it should be dramatically altered in ways that promote the free flow of ideas. It should be converted almost entirely into an anti-plagiarism tool, within this domain. Some sort of mandatory "go ahead and use this as long as you give full attribution" license ought to do the trick I think.
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
This is not entirely true, at least not in my experience. In many cases, signing over the copyright is a precondition of publication, and no compensation changes hands.
For example: A few years ago, I wrote a paper for an conference. To get it included in the proceedings, I had to sign over the copyright to the paper to the professional organization running the conference. Giving them a non-exclusive license to reproduce the paper was not good enough; they wanted the copyright outright. Not only was I not compensated for this, it was in addition to having to pay a non-trivial registration fee to attend the conference in the first place. When I complained to my management about this, they just shrugged their shoulders and said, "That's the way it's done." So I find myself in the curious position of not being legally allowed to distribute a paper that I wrote, and neither I nor my employer were compensated for the transfer of copyright.
Suggestion not well thought through (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed it would likely curtail sharing of material since I am more than happy to share my reserach code and educational material to those who ask for it under the CC non-comercial, share-alike license but would be far less likely to share if I knew some publisher could get hold of the material and sell it for profit (assuming they thought it worthwhile which is doubtful!) without my say. As you suggest what we really need is sensible fair use rights defined and enforced. Just because the current copyright system is being abused does not mean that the solution is to abolish it!
Re:Cite? (Score:1, Interesting)
...but some publishers are sticklers who complain if you re-use a graph of your own data that had already been published in a previous paper...
If someone really badly needs to reuse the same graph in two different papers, they are likely playing the LPI (least publishable increment) game - make as tiny a modification to earlier work as possible to get it published, just to boost your publication count. Think of how much easier it would be to play that game if no copyright law exists.
It is often trivial to regenerate the graph if you have the raw data (which is often the case) just to make it look different. I don't see how it really hinders anybody.
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:4, Interesting)
Who funds the research? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the school is funded in any way by tax money, then its public domain. Take one dollar in tax breaks or tax money into the school and you're public domain for everything, period. No exceptions. No loop holes. Don't like it? Go to a completely privately funded school that gets nothing at all from the government. If you want to enjoy the benefits of using my tax money then I get to enjoy the benefits of you using my tax money. This bullshit of schools selling stuff I paid to research to companies which then charge me a fortune to buy it back from them needs to end.
I have no problem making our children and future generations more intelligent and throwing into the pot to better the future for all man kind. I have a distinct problem with throwing into the pot to make some asshole professor more money while he rides the coattails of the students that he cons into doing all of his research for him in exchange for little pay (in the case of a phd student) or the students actually helping to pay his salary as well!
If they take ANY money from the government then I'm paying for the research and I expect access to it. I don't give a damn if someone else donates money to the specific project, if the the school takes any money what so ever from the government then you can not disassociate that money from the project. So if they got government funding for something specific, such as paying for some other building on another campus, you still can not disassociate the funding from the entire school because money the school would have spent on its own for the now government funded building is used for these other projects.
The school IS NOT A PROFIT CENTER. Its an educational center.
A completely privately funded, doesn't get any tax breaks, doesn't get any government funding, doesn't get any of my money or benefits of the government which are sponsored by my money, can do whatever the hell they want to at their school. Anything that has ever seen a dime of my money however, should not be allowed to do research that I can not use for myself.
University research is public domain, sorry if that pisses some douche bag professor off because he can't use someone else's money to make a name for myself, he should have got a real job.
Would Creative Commons Attribution License work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some sort of mandatory "go ahead and use this as long as you give full attribution" license ought to do the trick I think.
Would a well-known license like Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 work as is, or would it need significant adaptation to cover the scholarly use case?
How "scientific" publications work (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1200 [phdcomics.com]
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1201 [phdcomics.com]
These cartoons really help to know where the work and the money goes.
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:3, Interesting)
You only have rights to what you physically make
By this you say my composition is only worth the paper it's printed on. I call BS.
Shoulders of Giants (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a familiar discussion, although the assertion about not being able to cite your own work is bogus. I suspect that everybody in academia expects a new online publication model to emerge, but this is certainly taking a long time to converge.
The issue of so-called "intellectual property" is another recurring discussion, even outside the rabid FOSS ranks. See, for example (to cite myself as well as others): http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/11/29/an-ethical-question-involving-ebooks [thunk.org].
The absolutists here may want to consider a couple of complications. First, what about the very frequent case of multiple authorship? Without a third party such as a journal to whom to reassign copyright, the authors would constantly have to squabble between themselves about who - jointly, severally or individually - would retain copyright and in what proportions. Second, most corporate or educational institutions require their staff to sign over ownership of intellectual work products as a basis for employment in the first place.
There is no simple Platonic ideal of "property", let alone something called "intellectual property". The laws that exist (at least in origin) were primarily intended to defend the rights of the body politic, not of the individual "creator". Further, the notion of a truly individual creator is a fantasy. Newton saw further because he stood upon the shoulders of giants. (Or should I have quoted that 382 years after his death?)
A modest proposal - minor change to copyright laws (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't sign a contract that requires you to hand over your intellectual property rights if retaining them is so important to you
I think the fundamental problem we have with copyright laws is not whether they exist, but whether or not the author/creative artist receives compensation for their work, no? That is to say, for example, a recording artist deserves reasonable pay for their effort, yet the RIAA will likely (and IMO reasonably) be vilified until the end of history as the 21st century incarnation of the devil himself.
How about this for a change: Amend the copyright laws (and perhaps patent as well) such that only the creator of the work can own the copyright/patent for the term of their own life. Not extendable, and not transferrable, ever.
This would remove the secondary industry in creative intellectual property (which I view as somewhat parasitic) and change the focus to the artists and their works again.
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:4, Interesting)
So because I'm outnumbered, that means I have no rights to my creation? You need better argument than that.
No, I don't think so.
Of course, you cannot be forced to create something; that would be unconscionable.
And having created something, you cannot be forced to show it to anyone else, to sell it, or to not destroy it; that too would infringe upon your rights.
But having created something, and having shown it to at least one other person, what right do you have to force that other person to not make his own copy? You're the one asking for a right to control other people. You're going to need their consent, or else you're going to have to use force, which would be unconscionable (and impractical).
Real property law works the same way. You can claim that you own the Brooklyn Bridge, but everyone will ignore you. If you try to stop people from crossing it, because everyone else outnumbers you, you'll find yourself in jail pretty damn quick, because the consensus opinion is that you do not own it, regardless of what you say.
The mere fact of creation doesn't change any of this at all. It's a red herring.
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? What gives you the right to stop other people from playing that music? If you say someone is not allowed to play it unless they compensate you, why should they listen? They have the music, they have the band, and they're willing to play, and people are willing to listen. Why should you, a third party, have to give the go ahead every time? Just because you wrote the piece 5/10/20/50/100 years ago? Why should you get to sit on your ass forever collecting protection money from people who actually play music for a living?
I mean apply your logic to somthing like "Happy Birthday". What you're saying is that if the person who wrote happy birthday, or their estate, was still around, people shouldn't be allowed to sing happy birthday without paying that estate a fee. What lunacy! ....Oh wait.
No, it's worth less than that. The paper needed would probably come to something like, say, 10c. On the other hand the composition itself would probably take less than 1MB to store, costing fractions of a cent. It would cost a fraction of that to copy the file across the world. The composition is effectively worthless.
This isn't some abstract argument. The worth of data is going down and down. The forces of reality are slowly catching up with a concept that was always slightly artificial to begin with. You cannot reasonably expect people to treat data worth next to nothing as something worthy of sacrosanct protections. The modern surge in copyright infringement shows that people do not accept the status quo that abstract data has concrete worth and value. As our ability to store and copy ever larger data files increases, this attitude is going to become even more pronounced.
The only parallel I can think of in history for the current effect of technology on copyright is the effect of the printing press on translation of the bible. The church maintained for years that teh bible could not, even should not be translated into the vernacular, and that to do so was heresy. But as printing presses came of age, technology improved, and slowly more and more "heretics"/criminals began to translate the book and printed copies came into circulation.
Nowadays, we think nothing of a printed bible in the vernacular, or indeed someones right to make one. But back then it was a contentious issue. I think a similar fate awaits copyright. As technology improves, the status quo will slowly pass from unreasonable to nonsensical, and the whole concept of copyright will either have to go, or be amended so it can cope with the new reality of the digital age.
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? (Score:3, Interesting)
The GP was pointing out that there's little value in performance copyright, because no one else can play your performance.
That isn't quite true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli [wikipedia.org]
The performance group above was quite controversial explicitly because they were "playing" the performance of somebody else. "Canned" music at a supposedly live performance is still something that invokes continued controversy, even when a musician is pantomiming their own previous performance.
This not withstanding (and Milli Vanilli did get a "license" from the musicians who actually performed the music), there is more from performance rights of musicians as well.
The issue is mainly who can control what happens when a performance is recorded, and how can somebody who make musical performance rather than composition earn an income. One of the most famous stories is with Davy Jones [wikipedia.org] who performed music in thousands of concerts (I'm not making this up... it was over decades) and made millions for the music companies he worked for. Davy Jones, on the other hand, got a pathetic return for all of his effort.
Another musician, Billy Joel [wikipedia.org] is another musician that got screwed over with some early performance contracts.
The point is that there is value to the performance copyright, and musicians can and do earn money from recordings of their performance, but the music business unfortunately has a lousy history of actually paying musicians who create the performances in the first place. That is what needs to change, and unfortunately only the top tier and oldest musicians are able to negotiate contracts that allow them a reasonable return on their effort.
Contracts like Davy Jones or Billy Joel signed should have been declared invalid, and those kind of recording contracts ought to be made illegal.