Lex Ferenda

Dublin Airport computers have filters installed.  So this story from RTÉ News on the much-discussed constitutional issues with statutory rape laws:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0629/sex.html

is blocked with the following message:

Access Restricted
User Profile:

Reason: The website’s address contains a restricted CyberPATTERN.
Category: Adult/Sexually Explicit
To change any of the filter settings please speak to your CyberPatrol Headquarters’ Administrator.

Gee, thanks.

This is the full statement by two organisations involved in scientific publishing, responding to the current controversy on access to data. Broadly speaking a positive statement, and has the added intrigue of this: “The academic and publishing communities should discuss further (in the context of the debate on the public funding of research) whether more reliable and more permanent sites should be established to host research data. Given that STM in particular have been quite vocal against open access to actual articles, it’s hard to tell whether this is a step in the right direction or a ham-fisted attempts to answer the data debate in the hope of closing off the general open-access-journals issue (or in particular, open access for publicly funded research results, data, articles and all!). Also, there’s some silly stuff on databases, but I’ll park the rant on that for the sake of clarity. Here’s the full statement - it’s only on the Web in PDF. Source: STM site.

Databases, data sets, and data accessibility – views and practices of
scholarly publishers

A statement by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and
Medical Publishers (STM) and the Association of Learned and
Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP)

Publishers recognise that in many disciplines data itself, in various forms, is now a
key output of research. Data searching and mining tools permit increasingly
sophisticated use of raw data. Of course, journal articles provide one ‘view’ of the
significance and interpretation of that data – and conference presentations and
informal exchanges may provide other ‘views’ – but data itself is an increasingly
important community resource.

Science is best advanced by allowing as many scientists as possible to have access to
as much prior data as possible; this avoids costly repetition of work, and allows
creative new integration and reworking of existing data.

There is considerable controversy in the scholarly community about ‘ownership’ of
and access to data, some of which arises because of the difficulty in distinguishing
between information products created for the specific display and retrieval of data
(‘databases’) and sets or collections of raw relevant data captured in the course of
research or other efforts (‘data sets’). Another point of difficulty is that in many cases
data sets or even smaller sub-sets of data are also provided as an electronic adjunct to
a paper submitted to a scholarly journal, either for online publication or simply to
allow the referees to verify the conclusions.

We believe that, as a general principle, data sets, the raw data outputs of research, and
sets or sub-sets of that data which are submitted with a paper to a journal, should
wherever possible be made freely accessible to other scholars. We believe that the
best practice for scholarly journal publishers is to separate supporting data from the
article itself, and not to require any transfer of or ownership in such data or data sets
as a condition of publication of the article in question. Further, we believe that when
articles are published that have associated data files, it would be highly desirable,
whenever feasible, to provide free access to that data, immediately or shortly after
publication, whether the data is hosted on the publisher’s own site or elsewhere (even
when the article itself is published under a business model which does not make it
immediately free to all).

We recognise, however, that hosting, maintaining and preserving raw data or data
sets, and continuing to make such data available over the long term, has a cost which,
in certain circumstances, the host site may need to recover. We also recognize that
on occasion the generation of data has been privately funded, and the funding entity
may have a particular reason for restricting access to the data (either temporarily or
even permanently), but we believe these should be limited exceptions, and that journal
publishers themselves should claim no ownership interest in such data. The academic
and publishing communities should discuss further (in the context of the debate on the
public funding of research) whether more reliable and more permanent sites should be
established to host research data.

None of this means, however, that databases themselves – collections of data
specifically organised and presented, often at considerable cost, for the ease of
viewing, retrieval and analysis – do not merit intellectual property protection, under
copyright or database protection principles. Such databases are often characterized by
the sophistication of their data field structuring, searchability tools, and the like, and
scholarly publishers are often involved in producing and marketing databases that
contain valuable and useful information for scholarly research. The research interest
and value of raw research data sets and individual data points is entirely different, and
serves different purposes, from that of specific databases that have been organised and
compiled for particular research needs.

There is sometimes confusion about whether the use of individual ‘facts’ and data
points extracted from a database is permitted under law. Facts themselves are not
copyrightable, but only the way in which information is expressed – this is
fundamental in copyright law. In the EU, the use of ‘insubstantial’ parts of a
database, provided it is not systematic and repeated, does not infringe the database
maker’s rights.

Articles published in scholarly journals often include tables and charts in which
certain data points are included or expressed. Journal publishers often do seek the
transfer of or ownership of the publishing rights in such illustrations (as they might do
with respect to an author’s photograph), but this does not amount to a claim to the
underlying data itself.

We hope that this statement is helpful in clarifying the views of publishers concerning
raw data, data sets and databases, and that the statement will serve as useful guidance
for publishers in their policies concerning data sets submitted with papers. Scholarly
and scientific publishers share the view that research data should be as widely
available as possible.

June 2006

Interesting things are happening at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the specialised organ of the UN that is probably best known in recent years for its role in the negotiation of the ‘Internet Treaties’. There’s a meeting tomorrow in Barcelona (or as Freddie Mercury would say, Bar-ce-lo-na!. BoingBoing says quite bluntly that they are meeting to screw up podcasting. WIPO itself goes with the slightly more sober “Barcelona seminar to discuss broadcasting issues” … the truth is somewhere in between.

The mere fact that the seminar has the subtitle ‘From the Rome Convention to podcasting’ is not in itself evidence of massive conspiracy - but on the other hand, nothing is ever really off the agenda in WIPO, so the fact that podcasting is being mentioned again is at least worth of noting, if not necessarily panicking about. A single seminar like this won’t win or lose the debate, and as for the lack of NGO representation - sorry, did you think this was UNESCO? The very functioning of WIPO is focused on the needs of the content-owning companies; just read the previous treaties.

I’m currently thinking about webcast issues because of an upcoming paper for the UACES conference in Limerick. Podcasting is going to have to form some part of the analysis - the popularity of the format is steering the debate on linear v non-linear media and also has an added dimension of the various levels of copyright, which was a key issue in the original debate about Web radio/webcasting even pre-broadband! We come so far yet change so little…

Here’s the draft schedule

On a personal note, I have to share this article from a year ago yesterday that claimed that I produced the first Irish Indymedia podcast (in 2002!) … would be cool if it was true, but the word didn’t really exist at the time, and it was technically lacking in not having an RSS element. Nice idea, though.

Some people will be reading this and thinking: why the fuss? They will point to alternatives such as Amazon, and the books on sale in supermarkets; like David Lammy they will focus on (obsess about, in his case) ‘access’, and the internet; they will wonder why we can’t look to the future rather than the past. But that would be to make a gross error of judgment. What we lose now, we will never be able to get back. Thanks to legislation passed more than 150 years ago (the Public Libraries Act of 1850), there are some 3,000 libraries in Britain - a system of which we can be justly, straightforwardly, proud.

Rachel Cooke sets Labour straight in today’s Observer. And she blogs about it over here.

My friends in the Open University bring the good news that John Naughton (website | blog; also author of A Brief History of the Future) is giving an inaugural lecture (as ‘professor of public understanding of science; he’s worked there for years) this month under the title of the “Social Life Of Networks”. No synoposis yet, but when it’s available, it will be over here. Unfortunately the fee I pay to the OU doesn’t mean that they’ll pay for me to go and listen to him, but there will be a video recording some time after the event. Should you be anywhere near Milton Keynes (hmmmm), it’s on Monday 19 June.

Yet eBay contends that such references are informal and says that auction laws — many of them written long before the Internet and eBay even existed — should not apply to its sellers.

The New York Times publishes a folksy but probing analysis of eBay’s lobbying efforts in the US. I suppose the true question of whether the Internet is ‘bordered’ and the role of national law is not answered just by theoretical discussions and legal analysis, but also by a company like eBay having ‘a network of lobbyists’ on retainers in 25 states.

eBay has always played an interesting role in the ‘govern the Web?’ debate. It has been quite gung-ho about deleting ‘inappropriate’ items, for legal reasons or otherwise. However, the NYT report included this graphic (below) does show the extent of the eBay response to law (which is invariably ‘it doesn’t work for us’). A good public response would be to modify or craft responsive laws, rather than just carving out a series of exemptions. On another note, eBay launched (just last week) an email effort to promote Net neutrality - the type of local email campaign mentioned by the Times, going national and causing quite a stir.

Bonus point for the first person to explain (by way of comment) the title of this post.

Here’s the strange selection of terms that led Google searchers to this site last month:

lex ferenda
education v choudhri
media in sociology
aine chambers sligo
apple computers stakeholder
beverly mclachlin
computers
daithí mac síthigh
dept of education v choudhri
dept. of education v choudhri
dept. of education v. choudhri
euston.manifesto
lex for windows
lex steal
phone camilleri
silly day videos
silly videos
site:www.lexferenda.com wipo
social host liability australia
social host liability blog

How very odd…

Thomas the Tank Thug with thanks to b3ta.com.

The Tallinn Technical University Academic Male Voice Choir with a unique take on Hard Rock Hallelujah, broadcast on Estonian TV and notified by Petra (thanks!).  Watch it to the end, because there are a few nice extra twists to it.