[GOAL] Open Access Down the Drain

[Peter Murray-Rust]

Julia Reda, MEP, who has been fighting for years for copyright
liberalisation has a hugely gloomy comment ("Open Access Down the Drain")
on the recent deliberations of CULT and ITRE:

https://juliareda.eu/2017/07/a-loss-for-culture-and-research/

>>>

The Committee for Culture and Education (CULT) and the Committee for
Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) ceirtainly didn’t prioritize culture,
education or research in today’s copyright votes.

Open access down the drain

Both votes were in favour of the extra copyright for news publishers
creating charges for the use of snippets and links.



Incredibly, the ITRE committee – responsible for research and usually a
staunch defender of open access – even voted to extend the extra copyright
to academic publications, which would make open access publishing virtually
impossible. It would stop people from linking to academic content, despite
the content itself being free. This would apply to both online publications
and print journals. The chilling effects on the spread of academic works
and information would be substantial.

<<<

Julia is not given to sensationalism so this sounds very serious.

Personally I see increasing restrictions on the re-use of public knowledge
and think we are facing a potentially bleak future. I am currently writing
blog posts on why Text and Data Mining in UK has been complete failure:
https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2017/07/11/text-and-data-mining-overview/
and subsequent.I shalle writing several blogs over the next few days.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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