Science! by Alexandro Lacadena, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 A few weeks ago we wrote about how the European Union is pushing ahead its support for open access to EU-funded scientific research and data. Today at the meeting of the Competitiveness Council of the European Union, the Council reinforced the commitment to making all scientific articles and … Read More "Council of the European Union calls for full open access to scientific research by 2020"

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Science! by Alexandro Lacadena, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A few weeks ago we wrote about how the European Union is pushing ahead its support for open access to EU-funded scientific research and data. Today at the meeting of the Council of the European Union, the Council reinforced the commitment to making all scientific articles and data openly accessible and reusable by 2020. In its communication, the Council offered several conclusions on the transition towards an open science system:

• ACKNOWLEDGES that open science has the potential to increase the quality, impact and benefits of science and to accelerate advancement of knowledge by making it more reliable, more efficient and accurate, better understandable by society and responsive to societal challenges, and has the potential to enable growth and innovation through reuse of scientific results by all stakeholders at all levels of society, and ultimately contribute to growth and competitiveness of Europe;

• INVITES the Commission and the Member States to explore legal possibilities for measures in this respect and promote the use of licensing models, such as Creative Commons, for scientific publications and research data sets;

• WELCOMES open access to scientific publications as the option by default for publishing the results of publicly funded research;

• AGREES to further promote the mainstreaming of open access to scientific publications by continuing to support a transition to immediate open access as the default by 2020;

• ENCOURAGES the Member States, the Commission and stakeholders to set optimal reuse of research data as the point of departure, whilst recognising the needs for different access regimes because of Intellectual Property Rights, personal data protection and confidentiality, security concerns, as well as global economic competitiveness and other legitimate interests.

You can read the rest of the conclusions here. Crucially, the Council said that “open access to scientific publications” will be interpreted as being aligned to the definition laid out in the Budapest Open Access Initiative: free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

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Law, by Woody Hibbard, CC BY 2.0

Uruguay is in the process of updating its copyright law, and in April a bill was preliminarily approved in the Senate. The law introduces changes that would benefit students, librarians, researchers, and the general public by legalizing commonplace digital practices, adding orphan works exceptions, and removing criminal penalties for minor copyright infringements. University students were the original proponents of the limitations and exceptions bill.

But after its initial approval, collecting societies and publishers created a stir in the media to roll back the bill. And yesterday, a document was released that outlines the views of the author’s collecting society (AGADU), the organization representing book publishers (CUL), and the university students (FEUU).

According to CC Uruguay, these organizations have come to an “agreement” that would remove or modify many of the positive portions of the bill. The changes would have far-reaching negative consequences for users, educational institutions, libraries, and the public. They include:

• Eliminating the exception that permits copying for personal use. This could make illegal everyday practices such as making personal backups or format-shifting legally-acquired content.

• Retaining the possibility for criminal penalties for minor infringements. This could mean that users that are technically infringing but who do not create any financial harm to the author could still be liable for monetary damages of up to 45,000 US Dollars, or even imprisonment. This could include harmless, widespread social practices like downloading files without intent to distribute or profit from them. However, it should be noted that the existing Senate bill recommends that such matters be handled via civil—not criminal—law.

• Drastically limiting the scope of exceptions and limitations for education. Their recommendations seek to eliminate the ability for teachers to make translations or adaptations of copyrighted works within their educational institutions. For those uses that are permitted, they want to restrict the scope of the exemption to cover only reproducing short portions (up to 30 pages) of textbooks and “educational materials”. And the organizations say that only public educational entities should be able to take advantage of the copyright exception. Private and community educational institutions would be excluded. However, the current Senate bill is more supportive of exceptions and limitations for education. It permits both translations and adaptations of copyrighted works within educational institutions. It also does not discriminate against private and community institutions. Furthermore, the Senate version does not limit reproductions to only “educational materials”. This is important in order to take into account the wide variety of resources that are necessary for instruction in higher education today, but which might not fit with a traditional definition of “educational.” For example, music students need access to musical works, and many other subject areas need to be able access and use fragments of literary, scientific, and philosophical works. Finally, the Senate bill does not impose an arbitrary page limit for how much of a copyrighted work may be reproduced. Instead, it allows for greater flexibility in how much may be used; if there is a dispute, a judge will be able to assess whether the use was reasonable—taking into account the specific context of the educational use.

• Adding severe restrictions on libraries. The recommendations seek to permit public lending only for written works. This would mean that it would restrict the public lending of musical, audiovisual, and photographic works. The Senate bill already legalizes the public lending of software.The coalition suggests that the law should be changed from permitting public lending for nonprofit purposes to to lending “whose activities do not directly or indirectly involve any commercial purpose”. This change could further restricting the ability for libraries to lend materials.Furthermore, reproductions of copyrighted works made by libraries at the request of a user would also be subject to the arbitrary 30-page limit. Finally, the Senate bill allows libraries to make a copy of a work for replacement purposes when the work is no longer available at a reasonable market price. The group of organizations suggesting the changes wants to eliminate this provision.

• Enacting restrictions on freedom of panorama. The Senate bill legalizes a broad freedom of panorama—which means that anyone is permitted to draw, photograph, film, or create 3D models of architectural works, monuments, and works of arts exhibited permanently in public places. However, the coalition wants to restrict freedom of panorama for only non-commercial uses. This would mean that photographers, filmmakers, or artists who want to market their own works containing public monuments and architecture would be violating the law if they didn’t get permission from the rightsholder in the underlying work.

CC Uruguay believes that the recommended changes would be harmful for users, educational institutions, libraries, and the public. The changes would eliminate two of the most important protections in the Senate reform bill: the decriminalization of non-commercial infringement, and personal-use copying. The changes would also severely restrict other exceptions and limitations to copyright, including those for education, library lending, and freedom of panorama.

Their document recommends scaling back most of the user-friendly provisions in the bill, cuts other items that were drafted by the Council of Copyright in the Ministry of Education and Culture—and which already received unanimous political support by all parties in the Senate.

CC Uruguay thinks that Senate policymakers should view these recommended changes as only one voice among many stakeholders. Decisionmakers must also take into account the diversity of voices from educational institutions, libraries, and civil society organizations. The laws regulating access to creativity and culture should support the needs and interests of the public, and should be reached through a broad and democratic debate among all stakeholders.

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Prince performing in Brussels during the Hit N Run Tour in 1986, CC-by-2.0

Today at Copyright On!, Britton Payne discussed the unique copyright situation surrounding Prince’s estate. This potentially long and bitter battle could shape the future of music copyright to come. Prince fought a number of legendary copyright battles, which makes this current fight over the ownership of his works particularly interesting.
As Payne writes, “Prince was a tireless advocate of his rights as an artist, using copyright law to control and protect his artistic footprint, even when it seemed like it would cost him more than it would gain. For different reasons, it appears that more contentious exploration of copyright law will continue to be part of his legacy.”

Prince reworked his contract with Warner Brothers in 2014 to regain access to his early back catalog, which resets the clock on this law. However, every year more of Prince’s back catalog will be up for termination of transfer law, which means that his estate can gain ownership of an increasing number of works, and by extension, control the money that continues to pour in from his most popular titles.

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Bassel Khartabil, CC by 2.0

On May 22nd, more than four years after his detention and six months after his disappearance, Bassel Khartabil (Arabic: باسل خرطبيل‎) will turn 35 years old. Bassel’s imprisonment by the Assad regime is a brutal human rights violation and the continued lack of answers about his fate is a hindrance to the fight for free information in the Middle East and beyond. While Creative Commons has been actively involved in the Free Bassel Campaign since the beginning, Bassel’s rumored death sentence makes today’s call to action particularly pressing.

As Lawrence Lessig wrote in 2012, “We distract ourselves with a million other things, but distraction doesn’t change reality: thousands have died; thousands more are being held; tyranny still lives.”

Bassel Khartabil is a Palestinian-Syrian Free Software and Free Culture activist and project lead for Creative Commons Syria. Bassel’s work on Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, Fabricatorz, and other open culture projects with his research company Aiki Labs has been credited by the European Parliament with “opening up the Internet in Syria and vastly extending online access and knowledge to the Syrian people.” Shortly after his detention, Bassel was named one of the top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy for “insisting, against all odds, on a peaceful Syrian revolution.”

This weekend, we’re joining with his friends around the world to continue to demand his immediate return to life as a free global citizen.

Take action at the Free Bassel campaign website.

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