The fear is certainly valid, whether you agree with the interpretation of the license or not. No academic would be happy with the idea of someone twisting their words and republishing something that, if misconstrued, could damage their reputation as a scholar.
I'm inclined to suggest that a CC-BY license does not in fact grant these rights, as the fine print about 'moral rights' points out, noting that 'derogatory treatment' of the licensor's work is not permitted.
Nevertheless, the terms of the license do suggest it is up to the licensor to monitor and police this activity, and if necessary, turn to the courts to enforce it. That's just not practical for a busy academic.
Remixing isn't the only problem. Copyright of images or graphs can also be an issue. Anyone who gives a public lecture these days will be familiar with the release forms that you're asked to sign that require you to grant someone the right to reproduce images and graphs you don't own that happen to be on your powerpoint slides. Academic monographs have the same problem. How can we release our content as open access if the work contains someone else's work for which we have had to ask permission?
If I'm not mistaken, these two issues are the biggest objections to CC-BY licenses for the humanities and social sciences. Thankfully, Professor Mandler has offered another solution, and I'm all for solutions:
New License needed for HSS (Humanities and Social Sciences)
What a fabulous idea. What on earth are we waiting for? I present to you all for consultation: the Academic Freedom License, designed specifically with the needs of academics in mind, that both promotes open access and reuse, and prevents the types of abuses outlined above.
Academic Freedom License
For works released under an 'Academic Freedom License', you are granted the right:
To Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work in its entirety only.
To Analyse - to data mine and study the work and publish or create work of your own based on that analysis.
To Sell - to make commercial use of the work in its entirety only.
Under the following conditions:
Attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)
Excluding - You are prohibited from sharing, analysing, or selling any aspects of the work specified by the author or licensor (such as images under copyright or sections not produced by the author)
With the understanding that:
Waiver - Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Public Domain - Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
Other Rights - In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
- Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;
- the author's moral rights
- Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights
5 comments:
I tend to agree with Torsten on this. CC-BY works for me, and thre is no licensing agreement that will prevent the ill- and small-minded from misusing academic work. Besides, the essence of the thing is a belief that good work, strong argument and being right, is the best defence against mis-use. The 'whole document' thing would also seriously prevent re-use. Imagine for a moment, putting together a course reader from the chapters of twenty different books. The only way to do it under your license would be to contact each author separately.
Thanks both to Torsten and Tim for your comments.
I think I'm looking at this issue from a slightly different perspective than Torsten. I understand there are all sorts of discussions going on with universities and libraries and funding bodies. Those are important for the people involved, but more important to me is that we promote Open Access so that research can have its maximum impact and anyone in the world can access the findings of our work whether they are employed by a university or not.
I'm not particularly worried if that Open Access ticks the boxes of the Wellcome Trust or the AHRC or HEFCE. I'm more interested in developing a culture of Open Access that academics want to be a part of.
For that to work, I think the Open Access movement needs to make sure it's allowing researchers the agency to participate in this process. If someone says CC BY or CC BY ND doesn't work for them because they don't believe it protects their particular interests, then I believe it's our job to say, Ok, what do we need to change to make you comfortable? Shouting at them to "sign the damn contract, it's the only way!" or (as is increasingly the case) making them look foolish and uneducated, is not going to win converts to this cause. And I reiterate, that for me, this cause is to convince people to share their work more openly.
There are a million different leases out there. A million more contracts between individuals on a myriad of issues. What makes intellectual property so simple that it can be solved with one of 3 licenses?
Tim, you note my proposed license doesn't allow someone to take a chapter and put it in an edited collection. You're right. But we can fix that. It was just a proposal. It should probably also make it clear if translation or reformatting (eg, to speech or video) is allowed. There are lots of use-cases. All these skeptics are asking for is the right to be consulted about which ones are acceptable and which are not. If we listen to their concerns and let them participate, I think we can achieve open access whether HEFCE mandates it or not.
But a non-compromising approach that demands CC or nothing isn't going to win anyone over.
Hi Torsten,
I think the only thing you're missing is that these people feel alienated by the insistence that their problems are already solved and they're too thick to realise it.
If I decided I wanted to classify the colour of all the walls in my house, and you said my bedroom was blue and I said it was cyan, we could either armwrestle or hold a series of symposiums to sort it out, or I could just say 'ok fine it is blue' because I recognize that actually achieves my origional goal of classifying colours.
You say these people need to be educated, but I'm not convinced they're going to be receptive to it, because they feel their needs are not met by these contracts/licenses and the response they are getting is consistently, not to worry about it, just sign, just sign.
This is not an intellectual issue but a human resources one. Those people need to FEEL involved in a discussion in which both sides give and take. So far there's been very little give from their perspective, and while that ceases to change I don't think you'll find they give any more. I'd certainly argue that the skeptics have come a lot farther in terms of compromising than have those on the OA side of the debate.
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