Should Copyright of Academic Works Be Abolished?

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."

Comments

Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Colonel Korn]

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

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[grahamsaa]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[caerwyn]

Because the scientists generally get paid for their results (or even just for doing the research regardless of the results), which are not copyrighted; the copyright on the papers is ancillary (except for where it prevents plagiarism and other academic dishonesty).

Other creative fields get paid based on individual copies of what they've created- books, music, etc. The model is entirely different.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Aladrin]

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?

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Issildur03]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly, but we won't know unless we find.. omg.. a citation for your statement.

Moreover, the journals that publish these papers ARE in the business of making themselves money. Sure, they may be non-profit, but they sure do want to protect the content that they funded to print up for everyone so that they can continue to do so.

Speaking broadly, I hate, as a student, that so many papers are locked behind the websites for journals and I cannot access these to even read for free! What the hell?

It sure is stifling my ability to learn.

Thankfully most academics, including professors everywhere, make copies of these papers available to their students to study.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[rawr_one]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[imamac]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Dr_Ken]

"...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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Bender0x7D1]

You should be able to access the journals/websites from your library.

I know at my school, Iowa State University, that I can directly access the restricted journal content if I'm anywhere on campus. If I'm at home I can still access it through the library website, and logging in to their proxy. YMMV, but everywhere I've been the library computers are cleared to access the "restricted" content.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[moon3]

Copyright is vital, albeit flawed. Friend of mine made guitar lesson videos for YouTube, he spent half a year creating them, week after he posted them. Some dudes picked them up and uploaded them using their own YouTube accounts some of them have been placed above the original videos, gathering views, stealing credits, possible subscribers etc. Copyright is your only lever to prevent this from happening.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[ivan256]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[jeffasselin]

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).

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[marnues]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[CannonballHead]

Hmmm. No, requiring someone else to be allowed to copy it would be "no copyright protection." (or "no copyright." If I have no legal ability to prosecute someone that's copying my works (and presuming I don't own any guns), I have on way of stopping someone... therefore, I am being more or less "required" to let that happen. You're right, people copy anything they please. Is someone being required to copy it? No. But by NOT protecting my "art," and presuming I can't personally protect it, you're requiring me to let it be copied.

Confused about rights-to-physical-property bit. Are you saying that is the current state of affairs? If so, I don't think that is the case. If I write a piece of music and "copyright" it, whether formally or informally, as far as I know, no one can copy that music, put their name on it, and sell it as if they wrote it. Well, yes they can, but I could sue them - and if I were able to prove that I have a copy that predates theirs and has MY name on it, it more or less "proves" - in terms of courts - that I was the one that had it first, thus my name should be on it. As far as copying-for-redistribution goes, I don't know. It kinda depends on if we're talking about right-ot-distribute or right-to-claim-that-I-originated-this-art.

As for selling w/o copyright law, yes, I could. Who would buy it, I have on idea. I probably wouldn't. And someone else could sell it for cheaper, I'm sure. And without copyright laws, I presume someone could just tack their name on it and sell it as theirs. In that case, I not only have rights over distribution (or at least selling-for-profit), but I now can't even - to the common person - easily explain that I wrote it. Especially if the other person has enough money to pump it through a lot of presses and proliferate "their" version.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[jank1887]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[imamac]

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.

You only have rights to what you physically make

By this you say my composition is only worth the paper it's printed on. I call BS.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[mcgrew]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[jythie]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[cpt kangarooski]

So because I'm outnumbered, that means I have no rights to my creation? You need better argument than that.

No, I don't think so.

Of course, you cannot be forced to create something; that would be unconscionable.

And having created something, you cannot be forced to show it to anyone else, to sell it, or to not destroy it; that too would infringe upon your rights.

But having created something, and having shown it to at least one other person, what right do you have to force that other person to not make his own copy? You're the one asking for a right to control other people. You're going to need their consent, or else you're going to have to use force, which would be unconscionable (and impractical).

Real property law works the same way. You can claim that you own the Brooklyn Bridge, but everyone will ignore you. If you try to stop people from crossing it, because everyone else outnumbers you, you'll find yourself in jail pretty damn quick, because the consensus opinion is that you do not own it, regardless of what you say.

The mere fact of creation doesn't change any of this at all. It's a red herring.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[commodoresloat]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Sorry, but if I or CannonbalHead composes a 5-piece brass ensemble, NO ONE should be allowed to duplicate it without my permission.

Why? What gives you the right to stop other people from playing that music? If you say someone is not allowed to play it unless they compensate you, why should they listen? They have the music, they have the band, and they're willing to play, and people are willing to listen. Why should you, a third party, have to give the go ahead every time? Just because you wrote the piece 5/10/20/50/100 years ago? Why should you get to sit on your ass forever collecting protection money from people who actually play music for a living?

I mean apply your logic to somthing like "Happy Birthday". What you're saying is that if the person who wrote happy birthday, or their estate, was still around, people shouldn't be allowed to sing happy birthday without paying that estate a fee. What lunacy! ....Oh wait.

By this you say my composition is only worth the paper it's printed on. I call BS.

No, it's worth less than that. The paper needed would probably come to something like, say, 10c. On the other hand the composition itself would probably take less than 1MB to store, costing fractions of a cent. It would cost a fraction of that to copy the file across the world. The composition is effectively worthless.

This isn't some abstract argument. The worth of data is going down and down. The forces of reality are slowly catching up with a concept that was always slightly artificial to begin with. You cannot reasonably expect people to treat data worth next to nothing as something worthy of sacrosanct protections. The modern surge in copyright infringement shows that people do not accept the status quo that abstract data has concrete worth and value. As our ability to store and copy ever larger data files increases, this attitude is going to become even more pronounced.

The only parallel I can think of in history for the current effect of technology on copyright is the effect of the printing press on translation of the bible. The church maintained for years that teh bible could not, even should not be translated into the vernacular, and that to do so was heresy. But as printing presses came of age, technology improved, and slowly more and more "heretics"/criminals began to translate the book and printed copies came into circulation.

Nowadays, we think nothing of a printed bible in the vernacular, or indeed someones right to make one. But back then it was a contentious issue. I think a similar fate awaits copyright. As technology improves, the status quo will slowly pass from unreasonable to nonsensical, and the whole concept of copyright will either have to go, or be amended so it can cope with the new reality of the digital age.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[yankpop]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[clarkkent09]

There is nothing stopping you now from sharing your music with others.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[syousef]

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.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Teancum]

The GP was pointing out that there's little value in performance copyright, because no one else can play your performance.

That isn't quite true:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli

The performance group above was quite controversial explicitly because they were "playing" the performance of somebody else. "Canned" music at a supposedly live performance is still something that invokes continued controversy, even when a musician is pantomiming their own previous performance.

This not withstanding (and Milli Vanilli did get a "license" from the musicians who actually performed the music), there is more from performance rights of musicians as well.

The issue is mainly who can control what happens when a performance is recorded, and how can somebody who make musical performance rather than composition earn an income. One of the most famous stories is with Davy Jones who performed music in thousands of concerts (I'm not making this up... it was over decades) and made millions for the music companies he worked for. Davy Jones, on the other hand, got a pathetic return for all of his effort.

Another musician, Billy Joel is another musician that got screwed over with some early performance contracts.

The point is that there is value to the performance copyright, and musicians can and do earn money from recordings of their performance, but the music business unfortunately has a lousy history of actually paying musicians who create the performances in the first place. That is what needs to change, and unfortunately only the top tier and oldest musicians are able to negotiate contracts that allow them a reasonable return on their effort.

Contracts like Davy Jones or Billy Joel signed should have been declared invalid, and those kind of recording contracts ought to be made illegal.

Re:Why consider this for academics but not music?

[Teancum]

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.

Cite?

[arizwebfoot]

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.

Re:Cite?

[interkin3tic]

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.

It's odd that the summary and article claim that without actually citing any examples. The article just says "I've heard of..." Makes me wonder if it's not an overstatement, a misstatement, a severe miscommunication, or an absurdly bad publication that told a researcher an outright lie which he believed. Citing your own work, saying "I found this and published it here" can't possibly be barred by any publication. For one thing, citing an article increases the impact factor of the article, it's worth. A journal that is trying to decrease it's impact factor by saying you can't cite your own work is a journal that is shooting itself in the foot about three different ways.

I think what might be more likely is that the author of the article heard about a researcher who wanted to republish a figure he had published in another journal, and that journal wouldn't let him. And that's something that SHOULD be barred, you can't republish the same data twice, nor do you need to. BOTH journals would have problems with that, as would other researchers in the field. It's basically getting credit twice.

One exception to that would be if a researcher was publishing a review type article and wanted to include a figure or diagram from the original paper, making it clear though that it was not a new result but was old data included in a summary of the literature on a subject. That again is a journal shooting itself in the foot and would be ridiculous if it happened. I've often seen figures from other publications in review articles, journals that published the original data seem willing to work out an agreement with whoever is publishing the review. I've never published one, so I'm guessing, it again goes back to the impact factor. If you run a journal and an important result was published in it, you want people to know it was both an important result and was published in your journal.

This really seems like something that can't occour often to me. I could easily be wrong for other non-biological fields that I have no experience in though.

No

[commodoresloat]

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.

Re:No

[DdJ]

It shouldn't be abolished, but fair use should no longer be restricted.

I'll take this further: it cannot be abolished, because in this field in particular, tools to combat outright plagiarism are pretty important. But it should be dramatically altered in ways that promote the free flow of ideas. It should be converted almost entirely into an anti-plagiarism tool, within this domain. Some sort of mandatory "go ahead and use this as long as you give full attribution" license ought to do the trick I think.

Re:No

[Delwin]

Academic rules against plagiarism have nothing to do with copyright.

Public domain sans copyright = bad idea

[nyet]

As long as others can copyright things, the public domain will always be susceptible to looting. The appropriate fix is to choose a *license* that makes sense.

Re:Public domain sans copyright = bad idea

[cpt kangarooski]

for works in the public domain (shakespeare, the bible, mickey mouse, etc...), could someone republish them, in their entirety, only changing the author to "by Anonymous Coward"? is there anything legally wrong with that? I'm hoping someone can enlighten me as I can't even think how to google for that...

You want to google for Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003).

I wonder how MIT's "Open Journal" handles this

[peter303]

MIT is encouraging every faculty member to deposit an electronic copy of their published papers into a free library server. And MIT is providing free software and hardware resources to do this. MIT is one of 50 universities that now do this, but made the biggest splash announcing it earlier this year.

However a faculty can opt out a paper if a journal absolutely refuses making a paper open as some do. A more common compromise is the journal has electronic rights for 12 months with faculty rights after that. All in the name of financing the journal.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Bullshit

[slimak]

Most scientific journals that I have experience with to not pay authors in any way. This is certainly the case with all IEEE journals and several other scientific journals. Signing over the copyright is the cost of entry if you want your work published. There are probably exceptions to this, possibly for work that is easily identified as ground breaking. But my experience has always been that there is nothing paid when the copyright is transfered. In fact, most journals still ask for printing charges. This are usually optional (and I opt out) except when color figures are included in the manuscript. If there are journals paying authors I would like to know.

A bit of work to do first...

[Profmeister 3000]

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.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

[netruner]

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.

Moral but not necessarily practical problem

[MLCT]

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.

They can cite them, i.e. "we have previously found [REF]", without infringing anything, so I think you have gotten mixed up there. What they cannot necessary do without infringing is reproduce data/figures without gaining copyright exemption. It can be handled two ways, both involve citing the earlier work along with the reproduction to be absolutely sure that you are nobody thinks you are plagiarising yourself, and if you want to be proper about it then you can get a copyright exemption (which happens all the time for review articles). It will almost always be granted, but it is just a bit of a hassle to get sometimes. These points don't negate any discussion about the moral or ethical repercussions of being forced to sign over copyright - that is different - but practically there are no great repercussions.

I have had to sign away copyright on work I have done, and it does feel wrong. But on the other hand the journals are relatively relaxed about the situation, and you don't see legalise copyright warnings being posted to anyone. If journals annoy authors then said authors don't publish in those journals so they have to be careful. If academic establishments stopped paying subscriptions to journals then it might also be different - as at that point all of the copyrighted works the publishers hold become a rather more active asset to exploit since they may not be making any money from subscriptions (in some open access models for example).

Re:Moral but not necessarily practical problem

[datababe72]

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.

Re:Bullshit

[commodoresloat]

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."

What we need is publicly funded journals

[Goalie_Ca]

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??

Re:Bullshit

[commodoresloat]

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.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do scientists sell their copyright to journals? Because journals pay for it.

This is not entirely true, at least not in my experience. In many cases, signing over the copyright is a precondition of publication, and no compensation changes hands.

For example: A few years ago, I wrote a paper for an conference. To get it included in the proceedings, I had to sign over the copyright to the paper to the professional organization running the conference. Giving them a non-exclusive license to reproduce the paper was not good enough; they wanted the copyright outright. Not only was I not compensated for this, it was in addition to having to pay a non-trivial registration fee to attend the conference in the first place. When I complained to my management about this, they just shrugged their shoulders and said, "That's the way it's done." So I find myself in the curious position of not being legally allowed to distribute a paper that I wrote, and neither I nor my employer were compensated for the transfer of copyright.

tweeting and blogging banned at science meetings?

[peter303]

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.

Need for a special academic copyright?

[Volda]

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.

Shorter Copyright?

[Bob9113]

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.

Suggestion not well thought through

[Roger W Moore]

I agree. Without copyright every OSS product with significant academic contributions would suddenly lose GPL protection. There would also be huge legal fights for faculty over whether work was done on your own time (and therefore copyrighted) or done at work (and therefore public domain). You will also have trouble finding people to write academic textbooks - why write something if a publisher can just rip it off and make a (relatively small!) profit from your work? In addition you may see a significant brain drain from the US as faculty who make money from copyrights (authors from all disciplines, artists etc.) move to countries where their work is protected.

Indeed it would likely curtail sharing of material since I am more than happy to share my reserach code and educational material to those who ask for it under the CC non-comercial, share-alike license but would be far less likely to share if I knew some publisher could get hold of the material and sell it for profit (assuming they thought it worthwhile which is doubtful!) without my say. As you suggest what we really need is sensible fair use rights defined and enforced. Just because the current copyright system is being abused does not mean that the solution is to abolish it!

Yes

[commodoresloat]

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.

I don't care what information 'wants'

[John Guilt]

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.

Who funds the research?

[BitZtream]

If the school is funded in any way by tax money, then its public domain. Take one dollar in tax breaks or tax money into the school and you're public domain for everything, period. No exceptions. No loop holes. Don't like it? Go to a completely privately funded school that gets nothing at all from the government. If you want to enjoy the benefits of using my tax money then I get to enjoy the benefits of you using my tax money. This bullshit of schools selling stuff I paid to research to companies which then charge me a fortune to buy it back from them needs to end.

I have no problem making our children and future generations more intelligent and throwing into the pot to better the future for all man kind. I have a distinct problem with throwing into the pot to make some asshole professor more money while he rides the coattails of the students that he cons into doing all of his research for him in exchange for little pay (in the case of a phd student) or the students actually helping to pay his salary as well!

If they take ANY money from the government then I'm paying for the research and I expect access to it. I don't give a damn if someone else donates money to the specific project, if the the school takes any money what so ever from the government then you can not disassociate that money from the project. So if they got government funding for something specific, such as paying for some other building on another campus, you still can not disassociate the funding from the entire school because money the school would have spent on its own for the now government funded building is used for these other projects.

The school IS NOT A PROFIT CENTER. Its an educational center.

A completely privately funded, doesn't get any tax breaks, doesn't get any government funding, doesn't get any of my money or benefits of the government which are sponsored by my money, can do whatever the hell they want to at their school. Anything that has ever seen a dime of my money however, should not be allowed to do research that I can not use for myself.

University research is public domain, sorry if that pisses some douche bag professor off because he can't use someone else's money to make a name for myself, he should have got a real job.

Re:Who funds the research?

[zsau]

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! :)

Re:Don't Abolish, Educate

[interkin3tic]

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...

Re:Bullshit

[Cassini2]

For example: A few years ago, I wrote a paper for an conference. To get it included in the proceedings, I had to sign over the copyright to the paper to the professional organization running the conference. Giving them a non-exclusive license to reproduce the paper was not good enough; they wanted the copyright outright. Not only was I not compensated for this, it was in addition to having to pay a non-trivial registration fee to attend the conference in the first place. When I complained to my management about this, they just shrugged their shoulders and said, "That's the way it's done." So I find myself in the curious position of not being legally allowed to distribute a paper that I wrote, and neither I nor my employer were compensated for the transfer of copyright.

That is the way it works. If you include colour graphics, then many journals require payment before publishing your paper. In that case, you need to pay for the conference, and pay for the paper. In return the journal keeps your copyright, and stops you from reprinting your own paper.

To prevent some of these excesses, the ACM now has a rule that explicitly allows authors to include ACM papers on the author's own website. As far as I know, the ACM is the only association that permits this.

Would Creative Commons Attribution License work?

[tepples]

Some sort of mandatory "go ahead and use this as long as you give full attribution" license ought to do the trick I think.

Would a well-known license like Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 work as is, or would it need significant adaptation to cover the scholarly use case?

How "scientific" publications work

[rimugu]

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1200
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1201

These cartoons really help to know where the work and the money goes.

Simple alternative

[Lonewolf666]

Make publicly funded research a work for hire, with the government getting the copyright (and then releasing it into the public domain), or at least demand Open Access publication.

Problem solved (but you might need some earplugs to shut out the screaming of the traditional publishers ;-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A Look at Nature Publishing Group Strategy

[modrzej]

License to publish at Nature Publishing Group (publishing house of "Nature" series of journals, really big payer in the field of natural sciences) draws my favorable attention. The point is that the aurhor isn't required to give out the copyright of their published contributions, instead authors grant NPG a license to publish their paper. As it comes to reusing parts of published papers in future work, prior publishers' permission isn't mandatory. This doesn't work in case of review papers, which are commissioned by the publisher, where NPG is granted full copyright.

Does license to publish do any difference? Yes, because six months after publication the author has right to archive the manuscript in a free-access repository, even on NPG's server.

There's one more thing, which however applies only to biological sciences. Since 2008 those papers in Nature which publish organisms' genome for the first time are copyrighted under Creative Commons attribution-non commercial-share alike unported licence.

To conclude, it's worth noting that the academic world is pushing publishers towards less strict publishing policies, thats a big example.

Shoulders of Giants

[rlseaman]

This is a familiar discussion, although the assertion about not being able to cite your own work is bogus. I suspect that everybody in academia expects a new online publication model to emerge, but this is certainly taking a long time to converge.

The issue of so-called "intellectual property" is another recurring discussion, even outside the rabid FOSS ranks. See, for example (to cite myself as well as others): http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/11/29/an-ethical-question-involving-ebooks.

The absolutists here may want to consider a couple of complications. First, what about the very frequent case of multiple authorship? Without a third party such as a journal to whom to reassign copyright, the authors would constantly have to squabble between themselves about who - jointly, severally or individually - would retain copyright and in what proportions. Second, most corporate or educational institutions require their staff to sign over ownership of intellectual work products as a basis for employment in the first place.

There is no simple Platonic ideal of "property", let alone something called "intellectual property". The laws that exist (at least in origin) were primarily intended to defend the rights of the body politic, not of the individual "creator". Further, the notion of a truly individual creator is a fantasy. Newton saw further because he stood upon the shoulders of giants. (Or should I have quoted that 382 years after his death?)

Re:Bullshit

[pjt33]

It might be interesting to know whether this constitutes a valid contract. In English law, at least, you need "consideration" (both parties benefit), and you have situations whereby someone with a property which is effectively worth negative amounts (e.g. a house which would cost more to repair that it could be sold for once repaired) has to sell for a token amount (usually one pound) because giving it away wouldn't actually transfer ownership. Does having your paper published qualify as consideration?

A modest proposal - minor change to copyright laws

[Nefarious Wheel]

Don't sign a contract that requires you to hand over your intellectual property rights if retaining them is so important to you

I think the fundamental problem we have with copyright laws is not whether they exist, but whether or not the author/creative artist receives compensation for their work, no? That is to say, for example, a recording artist deserves reasonable pay for their effort, yet the RIAA will likely (and IMO reasonably) be vilified until the end of history as the 21st century incarnation of the devil himself.

How about this for a change: Amend the copyright laws (and perhaps patent as well) such that only the creator of the work can own the copyright/patent for the term of their own life. Not extendable, and not transferrable, ever.

This would remove the secondary industry in creative intellectual property (which I view as somewhat parasitic) and change the focus to the artists and their works again.

Re:Bullshit

[commodoresloat]

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.

Re:Yes

[lgw]

What he suggests is totally possible, just not easy. However, a prestigious group within a field could set up such a website with themselves as reviewers, and it would be taken seriously in that field. If you think about it, it's just a journal without the paper copy (or copyright problems) at that point.