Free and unrestricted access to research results and publications, known as open access (OA), is key to speeding up scientific discovery. There is also growing evidence that OA maximises the impact of research through better dissemination and uptake of research findings.

But how can we make this a truly global and sustainable endeavour? This was much discussed at the recent Berlin 9 Open Access conference in Washington DC.

Unlock local research potential with open access

Leslie Chan

8 December 2011 | EN | 中文

The traditional journal publishing
system is not serving the needs
of developing countries

Flickr/moonlightbulb

The developing world is not well served by traditional research publishing, but can break new ground with open access, argues Leslie Chan.

Free and unrestricted access to research results and publications, known as open access (OA), is key to speeding up scientific discovery. There is also growing evidence that OA maximises the impact of research through better dissemination and uptake of research findings.

But how can we make this a truly global and sustainable endeavour? This was much discussed at the recent Berlin 9 Open Access conference in Washington DC.

There was a recurrent theme: that in today’s highly networked, open-knowledge environment, the traditional scholarly communication system — with the journal article as the key currency — can no longer serve the diverse needs of scholarship and discovery.

Conventional methods of evaluating research impact based on journal citations, particularly the reliance on Thomson Reuters’ journal impact factor, need to be reconsidered and redesigned to reflect new scholarly practices and the diverse means of engagement enabled by OA and the new wave of web tools (‘Web 2.0′).

OA offers an opportunity to rethink what constitutes research impact, how to reward scholarship and how to encourage research sharing — issues of particular importance for the developing world.

Emphasis on international appeal

For too long, research assessment in the developing world has closely followed practices and metrics created by wealthier nations. Even organisations such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) continue to reinforce the use of the journal impact factor and the registration of patents as metrics for national research performance.

As the impact factor is heavily biased towards journals from the developed world, researchers from poorer countries have been encouraged to publish in indexed international journals rather than national or local journals as a way to gain institutional and national recognition.

This has done much to shift the emphasis of research to topics that appeal to an international readership, obscuring local research agendas.

There is also a growing emphasis on university rankings as a proxy for excellence, based primarily on research productivity — prominent examples are Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities. This means that the impact factor continues to dominate research evaluation despite widespread criticism of biased coverage and a flawed methodology underlying its calculation.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in China, where researchers and institutions are given cash incentives to publish in high-ranking international journals. This is seen as essential for boosting China’s presence in world science.

So while the total scientific publication output from China, as measured by Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science, is now only second to the United States [1], the focus on external recognition undermines locally important research and creates disincentives for the government to focus on locally relevant policy and funding.

Openness can unlock potential

This should not be the model for the developing world to emulate. Instead,policymakers should encourage experimentation with practices that take advantage of the potential of openness — in research, data, source code, educational resources and innovation.

Open repositories for publications and data, new tools for knowledge discovery and new forms of representation and visualisation can bring exciting opportunities for innovations in scholarly communication. Examples are the Open Source Drug Discovery Network and the Virtual Open Access Agriculture and Aquaculture Repository.

We are seeing the emergence of what innovation-policy scholar Caroline Wagner calls the ‘new invisible college’ [2], where researchers collaborate across disciplinary and national boundaries, driven by common interests rather than by international funding agendas.

This is a good time for research institutions with nascent capacity to overtake those in well-off nations by adopting better mechanisms for the exchange of knowledge. And they may be better placed to adapt and innovate as they are not bound by tradition.

Signs to the open road

Policymakers and researchers must begin to take advantage of these capabilities. This means thinking beyond the confines of the impact factor and towards new forms of scholarly metrics enabled by social media andnetworking tools.

An encouraging development, announced at the Berlin 9 meeting, is the World Bank’s plan to provide open access to research it funds under a licence similar to that of Creative Commons — a clear sign that the organisation is beginning to see the links between openness and innovation.

Recently, UNESCO launched the Global Open Access Portal to mobilise and coordinate OA initiatives across its member states. This late arrival on the OA scene could duplicate existing efforts, but UNESCO’s action is significant and should spur other UN bodies into serious engagement with OA.

And next year’s Berlin 10 Open Access meeting will be hosted by the Stellenbosch University in South Africa, making its first appearance in a developing country. It will be a good time and place to take stock of progress on re-evaluating the default measure of research quality.

Just as the rapid growth of mobile devices in many parts of Africa has spurred innovations in social entrepreneurship, mobile health applications and educational opportunities, so too could networked science based on OA be a source of innovation and local problem-solving in the developing world.

Leslie Chan is director of Bioline International, a non-profit electronic publishing collaboration, and supervisor for the International Development Studies programme at the University of Toronto.

REFERENCES

[1] Royal Society Knowledge, networks and nations: global scientific collaboration in the 21st century (2011)

[2] Wagner, Caroline. The new invisible college: science for development. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press (2008)

source: http://www.scidev.net/en/science-communication/open-access/opinions/unlock-local-research-potential-with-open-access–1.html

As of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press (NAP) will be downloadable free of charge to anyone. This includes current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports published by NAP.*

Free access to online content supports the mission of NAP—publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council–to improve government decision making and public policy, increase public education and understanding, and promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in matters involving science, engineering, technology, and health.

In 1994, NAP began offering free content online. Before today’s

announcement, all PDFs were free to download in developing countries,

and 65 percent of them were available for free to any user.

Like no other organization, the National Academies can enlist the

nation’s foremost scientists, engineers, health professionals, and other

experts to address the scientific and technical aspects of society’s

most pressing problems through the authoritative and independent reports

published by NAP.

Wiley Open Access will provide authors wishing to publish their research outcomes in an open access journal with a range of new high quality publications which meet the requirements of funding organizations and institutions where these apply.

“The development of Wiley Open Access is an example of our commitment to offer authors the widest possible choice in publishing with Wiley”, said Steve Miron, Senior Vice President, Wiley-Blackwell.  He added, “Wiley has a strong history of innovation in journal publishing and we see this as a natural extension of our service to our learned society partners, authors, and the scholarly community in its broadest sense”.

The new journals are being launched in collaboration with a group of international professional and scholarly societies with which Wiley currently partners.  Each journal will appoint an Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board responsible for ensuring that all articles are rigorously peer-reviewed, and each journal will be offered with the full functionality of Wiley Online Library.

The new Wiley Open Access journal Brain and Behavior will publish open access research across neurology, neuroscience, psychiatry and psychology.  Brain and Behavior’s newly appointed Editor-in-Chief, Andrei V. Alexandrov, Professor of Neurology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, comments:

“With the launch of Brain and Behavior, the Editorial Board and I, along with the support of many international societies, will offer the research community a high quality peer-reviewed journal that meets the needs of those authors who wish to publish their work in an open access environment. I am delighted to be working with Wiley to deliver this important new service.”

Professor Allen Moore, University of Exeter and newly appointed Editor-in-Chief of Ecology and Evolution comments:

“I am excited to be involved with this new open access journals initiative.  Ecology and Evolution will deliver rapid decisions and fast publication of research in all areas of ecology, evolution and conservation science.  By working in collaboration with leading societies to deliver open access to all, this new journal offers authors an ideal place to publish their work quickly to the broadest possible audience.”

Professor Geoff Hanlon, Honorary President of Society for Applied Microbiology (SfAM) comments:

“The new Wiley Open Access journal in microbiology will deliver something of real value, with in-depth peer-review, fast publishing times and availability to the worldwide research community.  We are looking forward to partnering with Wiley to support this new high-quality open access journal for the microbiology community.”

Wiley Open Access journals will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.  A publication fee will be payable by authors on acceptance of their articles.  Wiley will introduce a range of new payment schemes to enable academic and research institutions, funders, societies, and corporations to actively support their researchers and members who wish to publish in Wiley Open Access journals.

More information is available at www.wileyopenaccess.com

Lessig At CERN: Scientific Knowledge Should Not Be Reserved For Academic Elite

By Catherine Saez on 19 April 2011 @ 3:26 pm

Free culture leader and Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig was at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) yesterday to talk about access to scientific knowledge on the internet. In the symbolic place where the World Wide Web was invented and where scientists are now trying to unravel the creation of the universe, Lessig praised CERN’s open access initiative and in this temple of reasoning, said the copyright architecture was on the edge of absurdity.

[Update: the video of Lessig's speech is now available here ^[1].]

Although the major focus of copyright has been on entertainment, science is a field where internet access is unnecessarily restricted to privileged scholars, he said. The copyright architecture is obsolete and needs to protect copyright as an essential tool for creation, but recognise that sharing is at the core of the architecture of the internet.

The fight over the scope of copyright has been almost exclusively centred on artists’ rights, in particular in music, he said, and although everybody agrees that copyright is essential for certain creative work, a “sensible” copyright policy should be developed to protect and encourage that creative work.

“We’ve been fighting a battle in the context of copyright where copyright is essential,” and spending too little attention in a context where copyright is not essential, such as the context of science, he said.

Most scientific resources are protected on the internet, Lessig said. It can only be accessed by professors and students in a university setting. If “you are a member of the knowledge elite,” he said, then there is free access, but “for the rest of the world, not so much.”

The open access movement was inspired by the dramatic increase in prices for journals, he said. The market power of publishers had been exploding because the purchasers had no other choice than to buy those journals, he said.

Publisher restrictions do not achieve the objective of enlightenment, but rather the reality of “elite-nment,” he said.

YouTube Needs Clearer Legal Terms

Lessig said that YouTube occupies a prominent place in knowledge access. “We should not minimise” the significance of YouTube in the infrastructure of culture right now, Lessig said. YouTube has 43 different languages and there is more uploading in one month than was broadcasted by major networks in the United States over the last 60 years, he said. The world has gone from a read-only culture to a read-write culture, he said.

The system as it is, is not working, he said, as it lacks transparency and basic information so that people know where they stand. A sensible system should clearly state that it is plainly legal to make a remix, a non-commercial creation in which a user builds on something that already exists, even if it is not legal for YouTube to distribute it without paying some royalties to the copyright owner whose work has been remixed, he said.

Reforms are needed, he said. In November, Lessig was invited to talk at the World Intellectual Property Organization (IPW, WIPO, 5 November 2010 ^[2]), where he proposed the creation of a “blue sky commission” that would work on copyright in the digital age, as the architecture of the 21st century does not make sense in this age, he said.

The five elements of the copyright architecture that would make sense in the digital age should be the following, according to Lessig:

1) Copyright has to be simple. If it purports to regulate 15-year-olds, they have to be able to understand it. “They don’t understand it now” – nobody does, he said.
2) Copyright needs to be efficient. It is a property system, he said, but “happens to be the most inefficient property system known to man,” he said. “We can’t know who owns what under our system,” and there is a need to restore some kind of formality, such as a system to record ownership.
3) Copyright needs to be better targeted and should regulate selectively. For example, between copies and remix, between professional and amateurs. Copyright needs to efficiently regulate copies of professional work, but amateur remix need to be free of the regulation of copyright, not “even triggering a copyright concern.” Lessig proposed to deregulate a significant space of culture and focusing the regulation of copyright where “it can do some good.”
4) Copyright needs to be effective and provide revenue for artists, which is not the case today, Lessig said.
5) Copyright needs to be realistic. A war has been fought against peer to peer file sharing, where the so-called pirates are “our children,” he said, and that war “has been a total failure,” not achieving its objective of reducing illegal file sharing. Alternative solutions need to be used, such as compulsory licences, or voluntary collective licences.

Had one of those alternatives been applied 10 years ago, artists would have more money because fighting the copyright war came with high legal costs, businesses would have had more competition, and “we would not have a generation of criminals who have grown up being called criminals because they are technically pirates” under the current copyright legislation.

Academia’s Ethical Obligation

In the context of academia, there is a need to recognise its ethical obligation of universal access to knowledge, “not American university access to knowledge, but universal access to knowledge in every part of the globe.” Academia should not practice exclusivity, Lessig said, and leadership in open access should be exercised by those who can “afford to take the lead,” such as senior academics, “those with tenure,” people who can help redefine what open access is, and support, respect and encourage it.

Praise for CERN’s Open Access Work

CERN “gave us” the World Wide Web, he said, and CERN has taken the lead supporting open access in a crucial space of physics. This work will have a dramatic effect on changing the debate in science. It remains to find a way to leverage this leadership into leadership for the globe, he said.

CERN launched an open access initiative, to facilitate open access publishing in high-energy physics (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 5 January 2009 ^[3]). The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) is a consortium of high-energy physics funding agencies, high-energy physics laboratories, and leading national and international libraries and library consortia, according to its website ^[4].

Related Articles:

• Lessig Calls For WIPO To Lead Overhaul Of Copyright System ^[5]
• Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig ^[6]
• Experts Meet To Weigh Health And Environment Scientific Innovations ^[7]

Categories: Access to Knowledge,Copyright Policy,Education/ R&D/ Innovation,English,European Policy,Human Rights,IP Policies,Information and Communications Technology/ Broadcasting,Language,News,Technical Cooperation/ Technology Transfer,Themes,Venues

Article printed from Intellectual Property Watch: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog

URL to article: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/04/19/lessig-at-cern-scientific-knowledge-should-not-be-reserved-for-academic-elite/

URLs in this post:

[1] now available here: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1345337

[2] IPW, WIPO, 5 November 2010: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/05/lessig-calls-for-wipo-to-lead-overhaul-of-copyright-system/

[3] IPW, Access to Knowledge, 5 January 2009: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/01/05/project-underway-to-convert-high-energy-physics-literature-to-open-access/

[4] its website: http://scoap3.org/

[5] Lessig Calls For WIPO To Lead Overhaul Of Copyright System: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/05/lessig-calls-for-wipo-to-lead-overhaul-of-copyright-system/

[6] Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/12/global-copyright-reform-a-view-from-the-south-in-response-to-lessig/

[7] Experts Meet To Weigh Health And Environment Scientific Innovations: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/03/28/experts-meet-to-weigh-health-and-environment-scientific-innovations/

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By Catherine Saez on 18 April 2011 @ 3:36 pm

Biodiversity and climate change issues are coming together under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), according to a new working paper from the University of Edinburgh.

The CBD is engaged in questions relating to climate change, it found. In particular, the CBD has progressively addressed legal and policy implications of the impacts on biodiversity of climate change, as well as mitigation and adaptation measures.

The author, Elisa Morgera, a lecturer in European environmental law at the University of Edinburgh School of Law, analysed the links between biodiversity loss and climate change, and reviewed the main climate change-related outcomes of the 10th CBD Conference of the Parties (COP), in October 2010.

According to Morgera, the CBD “has been steadily working on climate-change-related issues since its seventh meeting in 2004.” At COP 10, delegates agreed on increased cooperation between the CBD and the international climate change regime, in particular with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

However, “the ultimate value of the developments under the CBD related to climate change rests with the systematic application at all levels of environmental governance of its guidelines aimed at ensuring that climate change measures are environmentally, socially, and culturally sustainable,” the paper said ^[1].

Related Articles:

• Climate-Ready Crop Patents Present Danger For Biodiversity, Group Says ^[2]
• UN Climate Change Talks Start With Little Faith From Observers ^[3]
• Panellists See Critical Moment For International Policy On Biodiversity And Trade ^[4]

Categories: Biodiversity/Genetic Resources/Biotech,English,Environment,IP Live,Language,Themes,United Nations,Venues

Article printed from Intellectual Property Watch: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog

URL to article: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/04/18/biodiversity-climate-change-policy-on-convergent-roads-paper-says/

URLs in this post:

[1] the paper said: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1753810&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1753810

[2] Climate-Ready Crop Patents Present Danger For Biodiversity, Group Says: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/10/26/climate-ready-crop-patents-present-danger-for-biodiversity-group-says/

[3] UN Climate Change Talks Start With Little Faith From Observers: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/29/un-climate-change-talks-start-with-little-faith-from-observers/

[4] Panellists See Critical Moment For International Policy On Biodiversity And Trade: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/04/23/panellists-see-critical-moment-for-international-policy-on-biodiversity-and-trade/

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read full item here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6018/703.full.html

Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig

By Ahmed Abdel Latif ^[1]

The copyright system is hopelessly unsuited to the twenty-first century and needs major reform, says Lawrence Lessig. Speaking in Geneva in early November ^[2], the American scholar called for the creation of a ‘blue sky’ commission, led by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), to consider a new international copyright architecture for the digital age. “If and only if WIPO leads in this debate will we have a chance” at fixing the copyright system, he told a WIPO conference on access to culture.

Professor Lessig is right. His call for global copyright reform is welcome and timely. However, past WIPO led efforts in this area have rather been unsuccessful. New reform initiatives should draw lessons from previous attempts in order to increase their prospects for success.

Past changes to the international copyright system, as embodied in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886), have mostly resulted in the strengthening of copyright rules to the benefit of rights holders. All attempts to reform it to the benefit of users of copyrighted materials, such as consumers and developing countries, have either failed or been of limited effectiveness such as in the case of the Berne Appendix (1971) which contains special provisions for developing countries.

Why this dismal record? The answer is quite simple: for more than a hundred years, WIPO and its predecessors overseeing the Berne Convention were strongholds of intellectual property rights holders, such as authors and publishers, and their trade organisations. Even after becoming a United Nations agency in 1974, WIPO continued to promote a paradigm of intellectual property (IP) that tended to espouse the views of rights holders-based organisations in the developed world; a perspective even generally questioned by liberal economists all over and touted as perverse for innovation by the business academic world.

In 2004, developing countries launched the WIPO Development Agenda, an initiative aimed at promoting a public policy oriented and balanced view of IP in accordance with WIPO’s UN status.

At the time, many prominent civil society figures and academics, including Prof. Lessig, signed a ‘Declaration on the Future of WIPO’ supporting the initiative. The Declaration invited WIPO to take “a more balanced and realistic view of the social benefits and costs of intellectual property rights as a tool, but not the only tool, for supporting creative intellectual activity.” It emphasized that WIPO “must change.”

Did this ‘Change’ Occur?

In 2007, after three years of discussions, 45 recommendations were adopted by WIPO’s membership, reflecting, to a certain extent, many of the demands made by countries and civil society groups. Under a new director general, elected in 2008, WIPO has shown an openness to address many issues which were previously considered taboo. Indeed, Prof. Lessig’s presence at WIPO bears testimony to this.

Naturally, this openness should be welcomed and encouraged.

However, it might be still too premature to consider if the ‘change’ that was called for has effectively taken place. The implementation of the WIPO Development Agenda is still very much an ongoing process. In many cases, it remains to be translated into tangible and concrete changes in WIPO’s activities and more importantly in the prevailing institutional culture of the organisation. It should also be recalled that almost 90 percent of WIPO’s income comes from fees paid by rights holders to use WIPO’s global registration systems, particularly the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Last April, leading developing countries at WIPO formed the WIPO Development Agenda Group (DAG), which called for implementing the Development Agenda recommendations in a way that “truly reflects their underlying vision and spirit.” The group also appealed for “an enduring pro-development cultural transformation within the WIPO Secretariat.”

An instructive example to consider, in this regard, relates to the information on the institution’s website about the WIPO Internet Treaties (1996), which were implemented in the United States through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). A brochure on the ‘advantages’ of treaty adherence ^[3] [pdf] states that “adherence and implementation of the treaties offer a number of benefits for countries regardless of their stage of development (emphasis added).” This assertion seems at odds with both the letter and spirit of the WIPO Development Agenda, which fundamentally questions the validity of a ‘one-size fits all’ approach to global IP norm setting activities.

Another example comes from the “war on piracy,” which Prof. Lessig denounced as a failure that is criminalizing an entire generation.

However, Prof. Lessig forgot to mention that WIPO is fully engaged in the war against piracy. WIPO’s website advertises, on its home page, the Sixth Congress against Piracy and Counterfeiting (2nd -3rd February 2011), which WIPO is organizing along with Interpol, the World Customs Organization (WCO), the Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) and the International Trademarks Association (INTA). The first session ^[4] has the chilling title of ‘Knowing the Enemy’. The question that is begged to be asked is whether WIPO’s ‘leading’ role in the war against piracy can be made fully compatible with its ‘lead’ role on in global copyright reform, particularly through ad hoc arrangements like the suggested ‘blue sky’ commission.

Finally, global copyright reform should not be confined to the digital environment. Developing countries’ grievances about global copyright rules extend well beyond the digital environment. In the past two years, developing countries have submitted to WIPO proposals for new treaties on limitations and exceptions for the visually impaired and for the disabled, educational and research institutions and libraries. Such proposals have been met with opposition by some developed countries and rights holders representatives who favour soft norms or technical solutions. More generally, developing countries view copyright reform through the lens of the broader ‘access to knowledge’ framework which is also an important component of the Development Agenda.

Global copyright reform is badly needed. It is ultimately up to WIPO member states to decide how to go about it. For the moment, hopes for ‘reform’ are embodied by the above mentioned proposals made by developing countries and they should be actively supported. Any future reform process of the global copyright system needs careful thinking and broad discussion about its objectives. Given that global copyright rules have acquired such a pervasive impact in many facets of our lives, their reform needs to take place through an open, inclusive and participatory consultation process where ‘all of us’ have a say.

Related Articles:

• Lessig Calls For WIPO To Lead Overhaul Of Copyright System ^[2]
• Brazil’s Discussion On Copyright Law Reform – Response To The Digital Era? ^[5]
• Lessig At CERN: Scientific Knowledge Should Not Be Reserved For Academic Elite ^[6]

Categories: Access to Knowledge,Copyright Policy,English,IP Policies,Information and Communications Technology/ Broadcasting,Inside Views,Language,Themes,Venues,WIPO

Article printed from Intellectual Property Watch: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog

URL to article: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/12/global-copyright-reform-a-view-from-the-south-in-response-to-lessig/

URLs in this post:

[1] Ahmed Abdel Latif: #bio

[2] Speaking in Geneva in early November: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/05/lessig-calls-for-wipo-to-lead-overhaul-of-copyright-system/

[3] brochure on the ‘advantages’ of treaty adherence: http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/copyright/en/activities/wct_wppt/pdf/advantages_wct_wppt.pdf

[4] first session: http://www.ccapcongress.net/

[5] Brazil’s Discussion On Copyright Law Reform – Response To The Digital Era?: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/07/15/brazil%e2%80%99s-discussion-on-copyright-law-reform-response-to-the-digital-era/

[6] Lessig At CERN: Scientific Knowledge Should Not Be Reserved For Academic Elite: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/04/19/lessig-at-cern-scientific-knowledge-should-not-be-reserved-for-academic-elite/

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By Kaitlin Mara on 5 November 2010 @ 3:47 pm

Influential copyright scholar Larry Lessig yesterday issued a call for the World Intellectual Property Organization to lead an overhaul of the copyright system which he says does not and never will make sense in the digital environment.
A functioning copyright system must provide the incentives needed for creative professionals, but must also protect the freedoms necessary for scientific research and amateur creativity to flourish.

In the digital environment, copyright has failed at both, said Lessig.

Reading, lending, or reselling a book is not “fair use” – it is free use. They are unregulated acts.

-Larry Lessig

“And its failure is not an accident,” he said. “It’s implicit in the architecture of copyright as we inherited it. It does not make sense in a digital environment.”

The copyright system will “never work on the internet. It’ll either cause people to stop creating or it’ll cause a revolution,” said Lessig, citing a growing system of copyright “abolitionism” online in response to a worrying tendency to criminalise the younger generation.

“If and only if WIPO [the World Intellectual Property Organization] leads in this debate will we have a chance” at fixing the copyright system, he said.

Lessig spoke at the 4-5 November WIPO Global Meeting on Emerging Copyright Licensing Modalities – Facilitating Access to Culture in the Digital Age ^[1]. This event is a part of the ongoing implementation of the WIPO Development Agenda. Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School.

He also spoke on video with Intellectual Property Watch after his speech, which can be seen below.

Larry Lessig speaking to Intellectual Property Watch
at the World Intellectual Property Organization, 4 November 2010.

Copyright Online: What has Changed?

Reading a book in physical space is unregulated, said Lessig: reading, lending, or reselling a book is not “fair use” – it is free use. They are unregulated acts.

But online, every use is a copy. This is “not about a generation that can’t respect the rules, it’s a problem in the design of the system.”

“Most of us can no longer spend even an hour without colliding with the copyright law,” Lessig said, quoting University of Michigan Law School Professor Jessica Litman.

“At the turn of the century, US copyright law was technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand, but it didn’t apply to very many people or very many things.… Ninety years later, the US copyright law is even more technical, inconsistent and difficult to understand; more importantly, it touches everyone and everything,” Litman wrote ^[2].

Francis Gurry, WIPO director general, said in his opening speech that the technical infrastructure of the digital environment is both key to the description of what is lacking about copyright and key to the solution.

“An idea whose time has come” is a global database of repertoire, which called “an essential piece of global infrastructure or as an essential global public good.” This was mentioned frequently in subsequent panels at the event.

WIPO Blue Sky Commission

Creative Commons licences, a suite of licences that build on copyright law by allowing a user to select allowed freedoms, have helped but are not enough, said Lessig.

WIPO needs to form a “blue sky commission,” a “group that has the freedom to think about what architecture for copyright makes sense.”

This architecture must be: simple – “if it’s going to regulate 15-year-olds it should be something that 15-year-olds can understand”; and targeted – regulation makes sense in some areas, such as protecting professionals, but not in others, such as in amateur remixing. It also must be effective, and realistic in consideration of “actual human behaviour.”

This realism involves acknowledging what has changed since the advent of the internet, and also what has not.

For all of human history, Lessig said, human culture was “read-write.” That is, people participated in the creation and recreation of culture. The 20th century has been unique in human culture, because the development of technologies of broadcasting and vinyl records produced an environment which enabled “efficient consumption, but inefficient amateur production.” This created a world that was “read only,” a “passive, consuming culture.” The internet has brought back that read-write environment.

The war on piracy has been going on for 10 years. “For some, the response to a totally failed war is to up the stakes, to punish more vigorously.” But this will only fuel the copyright “abolitionist” movement, said Lessig, adding he was “against extremisms, because both lead to destruction of core value of copyright.”

“We are not going to kill these technologies,” Lessig said. “We can’t stop the kids’ creativity, only drive it underground. [We] can’t make our kids passive, we can only make them pirates.”

Larry Lessig and Francis Gurry speaking at WIPO.

Related Articles:

• Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig ^[3]
• Copyright System Must “Adapt Or Perish,” WIPO Director Says ^[4]
• Should WIPO Lead Creation Of A Global Repertoire Database? ^[5]

Categories: Access to Knowledge,Copyright Policy,Education/ R&D/ Innovation,Enforcement,English,IP Policies,Information and Communications Technology/ Broadcasting,Themes,Venues,WIPO

Article printed from Intellectual Property Watch: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog

URL to article: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/05/lessig-calls-for-wipo-to-lead-overhaul-of-copyright-system/

URLs in this post:

[1] Emerging Copyright Licensing Modalities – Facilitating Access to Culture in the Digital Age: http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/2010/wipo_cr_lic_ge_10/index.html

[2] Litman wrote: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jdlitman/papers/read.htm

[3] Global Copyright Reform: A View From The South In Response To Lessig: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/12/global-copyright-reform-a-view-from-the-south-in-response-to-lessig/

[4] Copyright System Must “Adapt Or Perish,” WIPO Director Says: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2011/03/15/copyright-system-must-%e2%80%9cadapt-or-perish%e2%80%9d-wipo-director-says/

[5] Should WIPO Lead Creation Of A Global Repertoire Database?: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/11/22/should-wipo-lead-creation-of-global-database-of-music-repertoire/

[6] : http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/?p=13210

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