Open Access Publishing versus WWW Copyright

[Guest guest]

Hi Jonathan & All,

 

Jonathan wrote:

> ... I hear ... that material should be free within our profession, but

> if that is true then all of that free material has to be self created,

> and then given to the community, and cannot be directly copied from

> any source. Yes, there is fair use, but fair use comes with the

> citations of the source, the author, and with the copyright intact.

>  What this means is that there is the potential to pay a great cost if

> one is caught breaking copyright.

 

As Jonathan wrote recently (and Bob Felt and others have written in

the past) large-scale piracy of copyrighted texts has posed huge

problems to the publishing and translation industry. Jobs have been

lost and some small publishers are in financial trouble because of

that.

 

I sympathise with authors, translators and publishers whose work (on

which they depend for a living) was stolen by pirates for commercial

gain.

 

That said, I want to make a few comments but I also want to avoid

head-on in-depth discussion of copyright issues on data available on

the open WWW. These issues could become an explosive mixture on the

TCM List.

 

(A) WWW has become the fastest way for people (professionals and the

public) to access data and/or services of specific interest to them.

 

Why does one query WWW at all? IMO, it is to find useful data that

address a specific query, or to allow an online transaction, such as

booking flights or hotels.

 

(B) What does a professional DO with technical data located online?

Does one simply read it online, or copy it for later reworking?

 

If one has a superhuman memory, one can select and read online the

data of interest and memorise them instantly, integrating them into

one's brain's databases.

 

Unfortunately, most of us do not (indeed cannot) handle massive

amounts of technical data, gathered daily over many years, in that

way.

 

IMO, having scanned many pages online in one WWW session, most

professional users decide to SELECT and COPY to disc (or another data

storage device) the pages of most interest to the query.

 

Users then EDIT (summarise, abbreviate and standardise the language

in) the most essential bits. Then they integrate the shorter version

into their relevant files for fast retrieval in the future.

 

© In modern materialistic society, some people see information as

POWER. Rather than being regarded as a human right, many

institutions, organisations and individuals view technical info as a

COMMODITY or RESOURCE to be exploited for commercial gain.

 

More and more technical websites are CLOSED to the public. They are

accessible only by password access, for which a registration fee, or

an annual a retention fee, is required. This stands at odds with the

basic idea of WWW, which was (and still is IMO) to share information

between peers.

 

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/About/Web-en.html says:

Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web

(WWW) in 1990. The Web... was originally conceived and developed to

meet the demand for automatic information sharing between scientists

working in different universities and institutes all over the world.

.... The basic idea of the WWW was to merge the technologies of

personal computers, computer networking and hypertext into a powerful

and easy to use global information system.

 

(D) Open SOURCE versus Open ACCESS publishing: See:

http://tinyurl.com/5mqf44

 

http://dssl.mne.psu.edu/NSFEVO/index.php/Integration_Repository says:

There is ... a growing movement by university researchers,

administrators and librarians to make journal content open and free

to all. ... Our goal, in open source publishing, is to convert

readers from passive gathers of research into an active open source

research community.

 

.... Open access means the manuscript access post-publication is free

to readers. Open source means that manuscript sourcing (i.e. content,

assessment, review and discussion) is open [to the author and

selected reviewers].

 

http://en.curriculumforge.org/ConaHec2007 says:

The Canadian Library Association will make available " virtually all

of its intellectual property free of charge, in digital form, online

and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. "

 

(E) WWW publishing is evolving apace by the week and new technologies

will, IMO, dictate how WWW data might be categorised into " open

access for copying " versus " access for reading only with a ban on

copying "

 

For example, if authors or publishers wish their material NOT to be

copied, there are a few options open to them:

 

(1) Keep COPYRIGHT material OFF the WWW.

 

(2) If they wish to publish on the open WWW COPYRIGHT material that

they do NOT wish to be edited or re-cycled in any way, they can:

 

(a) Register their Copyright pages on a WWW index of Restricted

Access Copyright material.

 

A " WWW Text Copyright Registry " will have two main benefits, one for

the author / publisher and one for the end-user:

 

(i) It would allow AUTOMATIC detection of plagiarised COPYRIGHT

material on the open WWW. Software exists now to trawl INDEXED sites

of copyright material for random strings of text which are then

submitted automatically to existing search engines. The software can

harvest the URLs of websites that return a high score for hits on the

copyrighted strings. Those URLs can be sent automatically to the

copyright holder on the " WWW Text Copyright Registry " .

 

Using synonyms, more sophisticated software is being developed to

detect URLs that have edited copyright source-data and made minor

word changes before remounting the data.

 

(ii) A " WWW Text Copyright Registry " would allow WWW search engines

(like Google, etc) to EXCLUDE those pages if users want access to

open access pages.

 

(b) Have a non-removable Copyright watermark on each page

 

(b) Display the data in NON-EDITABLE form, such as:

(i) LOCKED pdf files,

or

(ii) digital photographic images. See examples on " Google Books " at

http://books.google.com/books?q=chinese-herbal & btnG=Search+Books

 

(F) I support the concept of open access to editable and reusable

(with acknowledgement of the sources) scientific and technical data.

I hope that this movement grows rapidly, so that technical data are

available to all professionals who need those data.

 

At present, many students and impecunious professionals in the west,

and many doctors and paramedics in developing countries, are EXCLUDED

from access to valuable medical data simply because they cannot

afford to pay the fees demanded for access.

 

IMO, this is wrong from a humanitarian viewpoint. I have no answers

as to [and would be out of my depth in trying to answer] how Open

Access publishing in the sciences and arts can be funded, or how the

livelihood of authors, translators and publishers can be integrated

into this movement.

 

I wish that wealthy philantropists would become more actively

involved in funding and supporting the development of the movement.

 

Finally, as I wrote at the start, I want to avoid head-on in-depth

discussion of copyright issues on data available on the open WWW.

 

Best regards,

 

 

PS: Tooth Fairies exist (ask my children!) but the ones that I know

are human.