[GOAL] Re: Copyright Law Destroys Markets

[Bishop, Tom]

Thanks Marcin. As people will see if you follow the link, the report was almost instantly retracted with a statement saying "Yesterday you received a Policy Brief on copyright law that was published without adequate review within the RSC and failed to meet that standard." !! I've just read about it in an email from the 1709 Copyright Blog, which I can forward to this list if people are interested.

Cheers,

Tom.

Tom Bishop | Head of Library and Surgical Information Services
The Royal College of Surgeons of England | 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields | London WC2A 3PE
t: 020 7869 6530 | e: tbishop at rcseng.ac.uk<mailto:tbishop at rcseng.ac.uk> | w: http://www.rcseng.ac.uk<http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/>


From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Marcin Wojnarski
Sent: 20 November 2012 11:38
To: goal at eprints.org; open-access at lists.okfn.org
Subject: [GOAL] Copyright Law Destroys Markets

A few days ago, Republicans released a report about flaws of copyright law, suggesting revolutionary reforms. Very important initiative for all academia. Scholars should speak and strongly back the initiative, to help liberate academic literature. You can read a write-up here<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121116/16481921080/house-republicans-copyright-law-destroys-markets-its-time-real-reform.shtml>. Some quotes:

 *   [about term of protection] ... Gradually this period began to expand, but today's copyright law bears almost no resemblance to the constitutional provision that enabled it and the conception of this right by our Founding Fathers.
- Original Copyright Law [AD 1790]: 14 years, plus 14 year renewal if author is alive.
- Current Copyright Law: Life of author plus 70 years; and for corporate authors 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication.
 *   copyright continue to be extended perpetually, ensuring that works never actually enter the public domain (...) that would effectively nullify Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution which provides protection only for "limited times."
 *   [copyright] penalizes legitimate journalism and oversight (...) Current copyright law allows for producers of written materials, such as memos or other documents, to claim copyright when they are seeking to hide incriminating information.
 *   Because there is minimal or nearly non-existent punishment for bogus copyright claims today, false takedown requests are common and have a chilling effect upon legitimate speech. (...) This often leads to de facto censorship.
 *   Current copyright law does not merely distort some markets - rather it destroys entire markets.
 *   [from Infringement Nation] things you do every single day are infringing and leave every single person liable for billions in damages each year
(emphasis mine)
There's a separate section on academic literature. Quoting in full:

B. Hampering scientific inquiry:
Scientific papers from the early portion of the 20th century are still under copyright. . .
This is illogical, as the purpose of most scientific papers is to further intellectual
inquiry, and the goal of most authors of scientific papers is to advance their field and
to be cited in other publications. Many professors are assessed upon the number of
citations for their major works. For these reasons, keeping their work in what are
effectively locked vaults defeats the purpose of much of their work.
Obviously these producers need to be compensated to justify the cost of their
research, but after around 14 years, most, if not nearly all, of the earning capacity of
their work has been exhausted, and at that point the overriding interest is in ensuring
that these works are available for others. While there are exceptions in the law for the
use of this material for good faith exceptions, there are numerous examples where
for-profit entities want to use published journal articles but are unable to do so
without negotiating a payment to the producer of the content.
If however, these older papers were available online for free on Google Scholar to
anyone to access and use after a reasonable period of time then it would greatly
increase the availability and utilization of scientific analysis.




--

Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT

http://tunedit.org

http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT

http://twitter.com/wojnarski

http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinwojnarski



TunedIT - Online Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms

________________________________
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20121120/6c3c4a87/attachment.html