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Should Copyright of Academic Works Be Abolished?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the time-for-the-copyright-anarchist-movement-to-start dept.

Dr_Ken writes to mention recent coverage of a Harvard Cyber-Law study on Techdirt that analyzes the uses of copyright in the academic world. Some are claiming that the applications of copyright in academia are stifling and that we should perhaps go so far as to abolish copyright in the academic world entirely. "I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone."

39 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. Why consider this for academics but not music? by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The biggest arguments here seem to apply to academics no more than to any other field. Why allow stifling of creativity elsewhere?

    --
    "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
    1. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by grahamsaa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think music copyrights are generally a good thing (that is, they tend to benefit recording companies far more than artists, and do stifle creativity) but academia is different. Academics should be even more deserving of the right to use / cite / republish papers or scientific studies.

      The point of working in academia is to seek knowledge and share it with others. Copyright prevents or severely limits that. If knowledge isn't shared, we're all more ignorant because of it. Academic works should all be published under the creative commons attribution license, or something similar.

      --
      Facts have a liberal bias.
    2. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by Aladrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The point of working in the music industry is to create music and share it with others. Copyright prevents or severely limits that. If music isn't shared, we're all less cultured because of it. Music works should all be published under the creative commons attribution license, or something similar.

      Now, see how similar that is?

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    3. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by Issildur03 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The big difference is that academics get money from grants and departmental funding, not from selling their papers. So, in theory at least, removing copyright takes away a musician's income, but not the academic's.

    4. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by rawr_one · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The creative commons license is a copyright, it's just a different (more permissive) kind of copyright.

      The idea of copyright isn't a bad thing, it's just that the execution of it can often (most of the time) benefits people who can legalese their way around the actual creators of content.

      In my opinion, there is absolutely no reason that the copyright for something should be held solely by the person(s) who created it; regrettably this is a very hard call to make with music, but with academia it seems a rather clear-cut answer. Even more criminal than journals seizing the copyrights to this work, though, is the university situation. Most universities force researchers to fork over all of the copyright licensing to them on some sort of bizarre idea that "because you used our stuff to do that, it's ours." (this, actually, is part of what intellectual property rights were created to stop; the idea is that other people could make the same thing that you have made but the important part is you did it. The tools are not important, it's the idea that matters)

      I suspect the music industry operates on a similar reasoning, but it's also much fuzzier. For instance, if a hip-hop artist lays down a beat and rhymes, but the rest of the music surrounding that is made by an in-house music producer, it's hard to say whose contribution was more important. Would people even listen to the "song" if it didn't have all of the other music? It's a hard question, and that's why I don't even want to try to address it.

      So, tl;dr, copyrights should be held by the people who make content, not the distributors of that content.

    5. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by imamac · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because a musician's income is directly related to holding that copyright. With today's technology musician's only give up that copyright by choice. Most musicians I know are happy to be idnependent and keep the copyright to their material in order to earn some income or at least suplement their "music habbit". Doing away with music copyright would be a travesty.

    6. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Don't sign a contract that requires you to hand over your intellectual property rights if retaining them is so important to you. They have value, and signing an employment agreement that hands over the rights to your university/employer/etc. is something that is or should be reflected in your salary or other form of payment.

      Just because people don't understand a basic property law concept (this isn't even strictly an IP concept ... if I make a widget using university equipment, my employment agreement may say they own that, too) doesn't mean the whole thing is flawed.

    7. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by Dr_Ken · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "...if I make a widget using university equipment, my employment agreement may say they own that, too) doesn't mean the whole thing is flawed."

      No, it kinda does at least in this case. And especially so if taxpayer money (i.e., our money) is used to fund the research in the first place. It isn't justifiable that we should then have to pay to access it. And nearly all of the major research universities public or private use taxpayer funds for their research.

      --
      "If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
    8. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Selling recordings is a recent innovation in business models for musicians. (And only a small percentage of musicians make any significant amount of money that way.)

      Most musicians throughout history have made money by performing the work. (Musicians, not composers).

      You don't need copyright protection at all in that case, since you're the only person who can possibly be you playing your music.

      Our current copyright system retards that process. Copyright assignment to recording distributors means that many musicians have to pay somebody for the right to play their own songs.

    9. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by jeffasselin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem is since US copyright allows the artists to give away their rights, the sheer power of the music cartel has forced the musicians to either accept their terms or not get their music put on disc at all.

      The situation in Europe, Canada and elsewhere is slightly different where some inalienable rights cannot be signed away, making the situation a bit better in other markets, but since musicians sign away their copyrights for the US market anyway it doesn't help that much. In fact it makes for weird and annoying situations like Hulu's where they can't publish their material in other countries without obtaining the necessary rights from the artists.

      Of course, the internet age of music has been changing things: the powers of the music cartel is waning, and self-publishing is much more possible than it ever was. You can hire private studios for reasonable amounts of money and sell and promote your music on the net. Although self-distribution is easy, self-promotion is still a problem for new artists because of payola and the hold the cartel still has on a lot of attached industries.

      And you know, I think copyright violation for non-profit use should be legal. Yet I buy my music (online).

      --
      If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
    10. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by marnues · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You have this equation backwards. No one requires you to let someone else copy it. People copying anything they please is the natural course. It only through copyright law that we are not allowed to copy something. You only have rights to what you physically make, not the abstract ideas and art behind it. And you can still sell work without copyright law. You just don't have a monopoly on it.

    11. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by jank1887 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      no. the point of working in the music industry (not just creating music, but working in the industry) is to sell your music in some form for a profit, or to enable that to happen. Academics (esp. scienctists) are supposed to further the body of knowledge in the field by building upon the basis set by previous contributors to the field. They are paid to provide a service (the research) not to provide content (the papers) although contribution is often rated by the content generated. They generally do not derive income directly from the content, and they arguably receive more of a benefit from free distribution of that content (knowledge upon which others can build, adding legitimacy to the base work) than they get from limited, copyright controlled distribution (arguable in that the publication process can add value, weed out the weak, etc.)

      So, that is different from the current state of the music industry. Copyright is meant to protect profits for a time to add incentive to create. That incentive is not as necessary for the creator in the academic world, so maybe it shouldn't exist.

      This is all separate from government supported / derived /funded research, which should be immediately available in the condition the researchers initially compiled it into before publisher assistance was provided. Sure, someone's gotta pay for professional editorial services, but I shouldn't have to pay for the data twice if that's all I want.

    12. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's not a different kind of copyright, CC stuff falls under the same copyright laws as any other work. It's the licensing that's less restrictive.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    13. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by jythie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      True, but the people who publish the papers (who do provide a valuable function) DO derive their funding from selling the papers.

      There is also the issue of how much money universities pull in from copyrighted and patented works by their researchers. If you cut off the universities ability to do that you need to find other revenue streams for people to actually fund the research.

      This is where you run into an interesting conflict. In a way, the researcher is being paid to produce materials FOR someone, and then that someone (university, funding source, contract, etc) gets the rights to that research. This is the same for any type of 3rd party work. For instance, if I paid someone to develop a website for me, I would expect to receive the website and all the rights to it. I would indeed be pretty upset of the author who made it then turned around and started using it for other things, including projects for other people.

    14. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by commodoresloat · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sorry, but if I or CannonbalHead composes a 5-piece brass ensemble, NO ONE should be allowed to duplicate it without my permission. My composition is not some abstract idea.

      Then don't share it with anyone.

    15. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by yankpop · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In a way, the researcher is being paid to produce materials FOR someone, and then that someone (university, funding source, contract, etc) gets the rights to that research. This is the same for any type of 3rd party work.

      You're missing a very important point here. For most university researchers, the 'someone' that paid for the research is the taxpayer. But more importantly, the number of university professors whose research has the potential to generate profits for the university is vanishingly small compared to those who are engaged in basic research.

      The service most of us are providing to our university employers is measured in courses taught, graduate students mentored, papers published, grants secured, and various other tasks lumped together as 'service'. The professor as profit generator is recent, still rare, and not entirely welcome development.

      In many ways, the idea that university researchers should be engaged in producing proprietary 'intellectual property' is counter to the academic tradition that such work depends on. Why should it be acceptable for someone to take generations of 'open access' research in physics, engineering, medicine, or whatever, add a little piece on top, and forbid anyone else from using it? I'm not saying it should never be done, but certainly not in a publicly funded university.

    16. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by syousef · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sorry, but if I or CannonbalHead composes a 5-piece brass ensemble, NO ONE should be allowed to duplicate it without my permission. My composition is not some abstract idea.

      Why not? If you've released something publicly you might argue that you should be granted the right to profit from it and that work should be attributed to you, but the idea that you retain control while simultaneously releasing it is flawed.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    17. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      >Copyright is your only lever to prevent this from happening.

      But copyright does exist and what happened to your friend was not stopped.

    18. Re:Why consider this for academics but not music? by Teancum · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The issue with academic researchers, at least in terms of the journals where the results of the research are published, is to ask who is going to pay for producing the journals?

      If you want to have a professional looking journal that has full-time editors, administrative staff, and reviewers (perhaps not full time, but at least willing to take the time to do an honest review and make it worth their time), you need to have paid staff. A good editor who not only knows the field but also has a strong command of language (English for most American and frankly international journals) are worth every penny you put on them. None of this is cheap and these are expenses well above and beyond the cost of simply printing the journal or operating a website (requiring other technical skills as well).

      The "business model" used in most academic journals at the moment is to use the power of copyright to be able to help pay for the staff in this case, even if ultimately the organization producing the journals is even officially a non-profit organization, nor are all academic journals are non-profits either. If you want to abolish the role of copyright in regards to academic journals, you need to come up with a financial model that will help pay for these journals through some alternative method. BTW, most academic researchers also pay the journal for the privilege of even publishing their research, and even then that doesn't pay for everything.

      It doesn't matter if it is government supported research or not in this case, although admittedly government funded research ought to have sufficient funds in whatever research grants are done to be able to pay for the publication of that research, including publication in peer-reviewed journals. Unfortunately, that isn't something popular with congressmen trying to cut costs and thinking such publication costs are a waste of taxpayer money. More to the point, in terms of academic research paid for by government funds, it is the responsibility of the constituents to demand that research and get their elected representatives to insist that the citizens who pay for the research should have access to it.

  2. Cite? by arizwebfoot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was always under the impression that you could, say cite the other work in your work and make comparison's and contrasts to the other work.

    Example: If someone came up with a theory with supporting test results and ten universities duplicated those test results - proving the theory - then those ten universities could publish their results all the while citing the originating test results.

    --
    Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
  3. No by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It shouldn't be abolished, but fair use should no longer be restricted. What these publishers get away with should be completely illegal under fair use provisions. Authors not being allowed to use their own works? And charging 75 cents a page for articles published in coursepaks is unconscionable, especially considering there is no economic loss to republishing in this form; it's not like the students in these courses would run out and pick up the September 1982 issue of Political Science Quarterly at the local bookstore if they didn't get this free version from their teacher. (I understand why publishers want copy shops to fork something over, but there should be an agreed upon reasonable limit in the area of a penny a page rather than a blank check, which is the way it currently is).

    Actually what would be nice to see would be that the copyright stays with the creator in all cases. Allowing the journals to acquire the copyright to this work in the first place is a bizarre economic fiction anyway; when the author can't even cite their own studies due to this fiction, it has been taken to its absurd logical conclusion. But the proposal here is unworkable without some kind of objective standard of what constitutes "academic work," and that's not likely to happen.

    1. Re:No by Delwin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Academic rules against plagiarism have nothing to do with copyright.

  4. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Journals don't always pay the author for scientific articles. In fact, oftentimes the authors pays the journal. e.g. IEEE transactions charge you $125 per page over a certain number, plus $2000 if you want colour figures.

  5. A bit of work to do first... by Profmeister+3000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many academics are rewarded by publishing in journals with top reputations. It takes time to develop alternative, low-cost, online journals that use better copyright regimes AND have a solid reputation. Creating a new journal with a decent rep takes years (best case 2-3, to get indexed and earn a healthy impact factor, and likely much, much longer). Worthwhile goal, but progress will be slow.

  6. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by netruner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The example in the summary could be easily handled by disallowing the transfer of copyright ownership for academic materials - making the originator always the owner with the option of allowing others to use their work.

    We have to remember the purpose of IP law - when it ceases to protect creators of intellectual works, it is no longer serving its purpose.

    --



    DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
  7. Re:Bullshit by commodoresloat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem is that the writers are a kind of captive labor force in this situation. Often there is no way to publish in these journals without giving up your copyrights, and your profession (and perhaps the progress of knowledge itself) demands that you publish in these journals. So they don't have to offer a fair price for your work; in fact, they don't have to offer anything at all, and usually don't. (The better journals will at least send you a few offprints that you can share with family members). And the author can't turn down their contracts without sacrificing his/her goals in terms of producing knowledge and achieving peer recognition.

    Frankly, I don't see why journals should be allowed to acquire copyrights to creative work they didn't produce in the first place. I realize this is a practice that goes back about a century but I think it's time to reexamine it -- any copyrights should lie with the creator if they are really to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts."

  8. What we need is publicly funded journals by Goalie_Ca · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Basically journals get academics to edit and review for free, to write for free, they force you to sign over copyright, and they charge you to access your own paper. Generally university libraries fork over tons of money to get a campus wide subscription to each and every journal. Everyone has to publish or perish (even masters students). Most of the research is probably government and publicly funded anyways. Anyone see anything wrong with this??

    --

    ----
    Go canucks, habs, and sens!
  9. Re:Bullshit by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not just about tenure; it's about the very goal of academic research -- to help advance knowledge. You don't do this without publishing in recognized peer-reviewed journals. And those journals call the shots in terms of what you give up to publish with them -- there is no negotiating; in fact, authors don't get paid at all. If you refuse to sign the contract, your article doesn't get published, even though it survived peer review. And don't say "just publish it on the web" -- it's not going to be taken seriously in your peer community without publication in recognized journals in your field.

    Academic authors are not in it trying to make a buck -- very few ever do, and certainly not through journal publications. I think that peer review should be the only filter on academic publishing; there is no reason that journals can't start publishing academic work without such contracts.

  10. tweeting and blogging banned at science meetings? by peter303 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One of the leading science journals Nature just had an editorial requesting that scientific societies establish policies on tweeting an blogging of talks at conferences. They recommend either complete openess or complete closure. Much of this now done by tech-savy excited grad students chatting among themselves. But some scientific societies consider this a form of competitive pre-publication, particularly in biosciences where commercial speed is important.

    This concern is not new. I've been at conferences in the pre-digital era where sneaky people tape record the talk and film photograph every slide. New technology in every cellphone make this much easier to do.

  11. Need for a special academic copyright? by Volda · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe they should make a special copyright for academic works. Allow the schools to create a copyright but its a limited copyright of sorts. People could freely use it, reference it or copy it for their personal use but if they ever want to sell it they then have to talk to the institution that holds the copyright for it and get permission or setup a deal.

    Personally though im of the mind that if something was created in the academic world it should be fair game for everyone not looking to make money because our tax money partially paid for it. Anything innovated for profit from said copyright should at least acknowledge and pay something to the original inventor. You take public funds and you'd better be willing to give that item, idea or whatever to those that funded it. The public. They couldn't of made it otherwise.

  12. Re:Moral but not necessarily practical problem by datababe72 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah the bit about not being able to cite your own work is just wrong. In fact, journals compete partially on impact scores, which are based on how many citations their papers get. The would have no motive to go after people citing papers they published, even if they had some legal basis to do so- which I don't think they do.

    Copyright on academic papers is to provide some financial reward for those who edit and publish the paper, not the person who created the paper. There are other models emerging to pay for this work (e.g., PLoS), but it is real work and it won't get done for free. Just abolishing copyright is unlikely to be a productive approach.

  13. Shorter Copyright? by Bob9113 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why abolish? Why not simply shorten?

    Originally copyright was 7 years plus 7 years (if you filed for an extension). That might work better than either abolition or the current situation.

    Or how about logarithmic payments? Free for the first five years, $1,000 for the next five, $1,000,000 for the next five (or whatever).

    Black and white debates, all or nothing, strike me as mimicking our current political trainwreck of two sides hating each other and refusing to consider the middle ground. Academics should be able to profit from their work (or their sponsors should) for a limited period of time, then it should enter the public domain.

    FWIW, I think the same approach makes sense for all copyright -- a period to make a profit, an extension period where you can choose to pay to keep your monopoly, with the cost increasing over time. Seems to capture the best of copyright (giving the creative the opportunity to turn a profit) and also captures the increasing cost to society over time of monopoly.

    --
    Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
  14. Yes by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, they are at the mercy of these journals, at least until they start their own, and it gains recognition in the field as an acceptable outlet for peer reviewed scholarship. The problem is that many of these journals have a monopoly on peer recognition in specific fields. And when scholars do open up new journals they usually go with one of the major publishers who set the terms anyway. See, scholars don't see themselves as providing a product to a market -- they are interested in advancing knowledge through their research, or getting tenure, or whatever. They're not trying to make a profit, but their work has been coopted by people who are. That's not inherently a bad thing -- obviously it allows for these nice paper journals to be published in the first place -- but the publishers have taken advantage of the situation and turned academics into a captive labor force. I simply don't believe they should be allowed to set such terms in the first place -- they should make known their peer review criteria and process, and publish anything that survives that peer review. Authors should retain the copyrights to their work.

  15. I don't care what information 'wants' by John+Guilt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Academic information should be free. Scarcity is bad; we won't get to post-scarcity (which only the very mean, in the literal sense, shouldn't want) if we continue to allow for artificial, weapons-enforced, scarcity. Neither should the Academy become like the Market---societies work better when there are multiple power centres, multiple ways of gaining status.... One whose only allegiance is to what's so (as opposed to whatever the State or the Market would value) is a great reality-check for the others.

  16. Re:Don't Abolish, Educate by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Pretty sad when an academic doesn't learn the relevant details of copyright as pertains to their work.

    Some of us are so busy trying to teach relevant classes, get the results to publish, write the papers, get them approved, get our work funded, pass tests, give lab meeting, and/or manage our non-academic lives that we don't give much thought to the subject.

    And then there are those few of us who waste so much time on /. and other websites that it really invalidates the points we are trying to make on those websites...

  17. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  18. Re:Bullshit by commodoresloat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The question isn't whether you personally might trust some random website over a well known journal; the question is whether the academic community does. I am all for "non-commercial publishing backed up by sound peer review"; the problem is if you're publishing in journals that nobody knows about or takes seriously, your work won't be read by others, it won't be cited in articles by other scholars or researchers, and it won't seriously make any kind of impact in your field. If your field has truly non-commercial outlets for academic work, and those outlets don't make you give up your rights as a precondition for publication, you're fortunate. I'd certainly love to see more of this throughout academia.

  19. Re:Who funds the research? by zsau · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wait. So if I pay a researcher a trillion dollars to do some research that interests me, and he also got a single cent from the government, I should suddenly lose all my interest in the matter? Why is my trillion dollars worth less than the government's cent? If you had've given that researcher that one cent, you probably would be pleased to get an email letting you know it's done but wouldn't expect anything in return. No-one would ever pay for research again; it'd come down to government money and philanthropists.

    It is absurd to suppose the government's money is magic. It is also absurd to suppose that the researcher hasn't made a massive investment. That "douche bag professor" made a massive sacrifice to educate himself to give you all the benefits he produces. He should be reimbursed for that --- fully. The salary he receives is a pittance compared to the benefits he brings to society (if he's capable of profiting hand over fist from his research, I mean). The added incentive of a decent return on investment will mean he generates more to the benefit of society. It's how capitalism works.

    (Incidentally, your arguments, taken through to their logical conclusion, lead only to communism for the whole of society. We could save a mint by not building one![1] At least one cent of government money has gone into your education, so all your education is public domain and everything you produced because of it is public domain. If we bring that in retrospectively, nothing will be outside of the public domain; if we grandfather it in, it will be incredibly hard to stay outside the public domain.)

    [1]: LOL! :)

    --
    Look out!
  20. Journal Monopoly - Reed-Elsevier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What you fail to realize is that most of the journals are owned by a giant Fortune 500 company - Reed-Elsevier. Lately Universities have taken to boycotting Elsevier for their prices or unethical practices. http://www.library.illinois.edu/scholcomm/journalcosts.html

    For instance, organizing the trade of armaments

    Here's a very ironic journal article - Elsevier implicating itself in the trade of weapons http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJN-4NX8KRF-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=56eb902c4de87a193e5e591a64781d53

    Since you don't have access to that http://editor-mom.blogspot.com/2007/03/another-medical-journal-calls-for.html

    Reed-Elsevier's former CEO, Sir Crispin Davis, was also on the board of directors for GlaxoSmithKline. Even after all this time, we're still controlled by a bunch of blue bloods with money.