DoD Public Domain Archive To Be Privatized, Locked Up For 10 Years

Jah-Wren Ryel writes "Looks like the copyright cartel have raided the public domain yet again — the US DoD has signed an exclusive contract with T3 Media to digitize their media archive in exchange for T3 having complete licensing control for 10 years. Considering that all output from the US government is, by law, ineligible for copyright, this deal seems borderline illegal at best. To make matters worse, it appears that there is no provision to make the digitized content freely accessible after the 10 years are up — which means we risk having all that content disappear into T3."

Comments

Legality vs Enforceability

[Silentknyght]

It seems, lately, that there is a clearer-than-ever delineation between legality and enforceability. If our government commits an illegal act, who is able to enforce it? Who's able to hold them accountable? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that question.

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[mattie_p]

It seems, lately, that there is a clearer-than-ever delineation between legality and enforceability. If our government commits an illegal act, who is able to enforce it? Who's able to hold them accountable? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that question.

The only thing with power over the US Government is other parts of the US government. Thus if the executive branch commits an illegal act, the Congress can impeach, the courts can make orders, etc. If the Congress passes an unconstitutional law, the courts can annul by ruling on the constitutionality. If the courts go overboard, the President and the Congress can appoint new justices. Checks and balances.

This act is on the executive branch side, so it is up to the legislature and/or courts to enforce. Private citizens can speed up the process by trying to sue, but of course, good luck finding someone with standing in this case, based on recent court rulings about domestic surveillance (only the phone companies have standing, not the people whose records were obtained).

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems, lately, that there is a clearer-than-ever delineation between legality and enforceability. If our government commits an illegal act, who is able to enforce it? Who's able to hold them accountable? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that question.

The only thing with power over the US Government is other parts of the US government. Thus if the executive branch commits an illegal act, the Congress can impeach, the courts can make orders, etc. If the Congress passes an unconstitutional law, the courts can annul by ruling on the constitutionality. If the courts go overboard, the President and the Congress can appoint new justices. Checks and balances.

  This act is on the executive branch side, so it is up to the legislature and/or courts to enforce. Private citizens can speed up the process by trying to sue, but of course, good luck finding someone with standing in this case, based on recent court rulings about domestic surveillance (only the phone companies have standing, not the people whose records were obtained).

Thank you for the history lesson. Now let me give you one of my own. Checks and Balances was replaced with Greed and Corruption a long time ago, which really means you can throw all this bullshit about laws and constitution out the window.

It'll be downright comical to see how our history books paint over the financial meltdown of 2008 as a "minor setback" when many children growing up in impacted households will remember damn well what it was like. Question is will the Sheeple give a shit any more then than they do now? You don't even need wool for the eyes these days, and the parents question still stands, as no part of the government seems enforceable or accountable. If you can find one, let me know.

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[girlintraining]

The only thing with power over the US Government is other parts of the US government.

Wrong. Thomas Jefferson, please excuse me waking you from your long nap, but I need an opinion. "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thank you Mr. Jefferson. You can now go lay down again. "Brrraaaaiiinnnss...." Yeah, I know. I miss 'em too, sir.

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who's able to hold them accountable?"

As a European, I'd like to answer: the people.
Dear Americans, stop voting Republicans or Democrats.
Thanks, the rest of the world.

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[haruchai]

That's what terrorists are for :-)

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[M. Baranczak]

But who guards the Coastguard?

The Reserve Coast Guard.

Either that, or they guard the reserve coast. I can't remember.

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[erroneus]

It's supposed to be the courts. But when the courts rule one way and then law enforcement ignores it, we're just lost. It's depressing. Law enforcement will, for example, trample various right and punish locally even executing prisoners (calling it an accident) when they know the judiciary will rule against them. It's sick. It's disgusting. We don't have rule of law. We have rule of governments.

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[BlueStrat]

It seems, lately, that there is a clearer-than-ever delineation between legality and enforceability. If our government commits an illegal act, who is able to enforce it? Who's able to hold them accountable? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that question.

The answer to your question is the same answer that's included in the Constitution, the same answer that's always been the ultimate answer to all out-of-control governments.

You. The citizens.

You and others that would be willing to put your lives on the line when all other options have been shown to be worthless/ineffective, to pick up a sniper rifle, build an IED, make Molotov cocktails, organize and plan, and target the criminal leaders and take them out..

There are still a few peaceful options left to try yet, like the recent push for a convention of States to amend the Constitution to rein in the Federal government.

http://conventionofstates.com/

However, if the government steps in to stop such reforms, there will be no alternatives left.

Strat

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[pixelpusher220]

Checks and balances was replaced with apathy on the part of the electorate; the greed and corruption blossomed from there.

We can still take it back, but given the state of the elector.....oooo Kardashians!

I won't say I'm too hopeful.

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[AJWM]

But there is no other party to vote for? It's only a meaningful vote if it is for the party who wins!

Please, do us all a favor and never go near a voting booth again. That has to be one of the most stupid things I have ever read. By your logic, we should only have one party if votes are to be meaningful, and clearly that is the opposite of the truth.

You've been utterly brainwashed by the two big parties, who fear votes for third parties more than they fear votes for the other major party. We could use a little more fear of the electorate in the big parties. If you must enter a polling booth, please vote third party. Any third party. Sometimes it actually does some good. (Even if third party doesn't win, it can shake up the Republicrats and Demicans enough that they change their policies.)

(And if you were kidding, please include a tag next time.)

Re:Legality vs Enforceability

[Martin Blank]

Your complaints aren't remotely new, but they're also not remotely realistic.

The Constitution gives Congress certain powers such to coin money, but no one expected them to personally work in the mints. They draft the laws that provide for the duties to be carried out by other parts of government. Technically, they have the power to raise and spend money, but they don't have a constitutional requirement.

The Executive Branch is provided the responsibility to enforce the laws, but for practical matters require that it must sometimes decline to enforce the law due to other, more pressing concerns such as the cost of prosecution or where the effect of enforcing the law could have a larger detriment. This might include not enforcing some aspect of the health care law to allow for practical realities to be ironed out.

The Supreme Court has always had internal politics. In one extreme example, Justice James Clark Reynolds despised Justices Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo simply because the they were Jews and would not sit next to or speak with them nor sign opinions written by them. But one does not ever know for certain how they will rule going in. One of the most stunning to me was in Gonzalez v. Raich over California's legalization of medical marijuana. The case was decided 6-3, but the dissent included one by Justice O'Connor which was joined by the Chief Justice Rehnquist and a separate dissent by Justice Thomas, the latter two of the most conservative justices who broke with their conservative colleagues who grouped with their more liberal colleagues to rule in favor of the federal government.

Finally, on the topic of corporations and politics, the argument is that corporations are groups of people. To block spending by them, every other group would have to be blocked from political spending. Maybe this would be good--it would certainly quell the protest from the right over unions spending money--but as we've seen with 501(c)(4) groups, getting that regulation right is incredibly difficult. But it may also have a detrimental effect on anonymous contribution to political dialogue, as forcing everyone behind the political speech to be named could be seen as oppressive.

Many people want a very simple, straightforward implementation of the ideals in the Constitution. But reality is messy, and political reality even worse. No one gets everything they want, at least not for long, before something swings against them.

Teabaggers strike again....

[Anonymous Coward]

Our only hope is Obama will stop this.

Pictures are public, but the index isn't.

[Sarten-X]

From reading TFAs, it seems T3 is getting an "exclusive license to charge for access", which isn't really a legal concept AFAIK. It looks like T3 is taking public-domain DoD images and videos, digitizing and cataloging them, then charging for access to the digital form. They're exclusively selling that access to the digital catalog, but the images and videos themselves are still public domain. I'm not sure whether digitizing counts as creating a new work for copyright purposes.

Re:Pictures are public, but the index isn't.

[Trepidity]

The government themselves do this kind of thing sometimes: charge for the actual delivery of the digital documents, which are public domain. That's not illegal, just not really sustainable. Since they're public domain, anyone who buys them could, if they choose, redistribute them. One instance of that that I recall was that in 1999, Bruce Perens bought the TIGER geographic data set from the US Census on CD, for I think $500 or $1000 or something, and then released it online freely. The Census Bureau wised up and you can now download new versions of the TIGER data set directly from the Census at the previous link instead of having to play that game.

Another example is the court document database, PACER, which has public-domain documents but charges per-page for access. That's led to RECAP, a project to slowly siphon documents out of it and republish them.

FOIA

[Dachannien]

These records would seem to be responsive to a proper FOIA request, and if the government already has already-paid-for access to the records, they would be required to pony up those records at the cost of duplication (which would arguably get around the third-party fees this company would charge).

Why they didn't just give all this stuff to Google is beyond me. I'm sure they'd love to have a project like this, and they'd probably make it publicly available for the price of ads.

Re:FOIA

[NoKaOi]

Why they didn't just give all this stuff to Google is beyond me. I'm sure they'd love to have a project like this, and they'd probably make it publicly available for the price of ads.

Can you really not imagine why they might do this? How much money is T3 making off of this, and who are they brib^H^H^H^H contributing campaign funds to?

Re:FOIA

[girlintraining]

Can you really not imagine why they might do this? How much money is T3 making off of this, and who are they brib^H^H^H^H contributing campaign funds to?

There's a simpler explanation than bribery: What's the average age of a US Senator? 57 years old. Average. Google to them is like space aged rocket science. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. A lot of the government's actions can be explained by simple senility -- these people aren't just out of touch with society, in many cases they're in a phase of life marked by significant decline in cognitive reasoning, and studies have been done suggesting that the elderly are far more trusting than they should be due to biochemical changes in the brain. Put another way: They're easily suckered.

This is an exceedingly obvious thing to have to point out, but it seems to be forgotten all the time by people who, were they to just divorce themselves from their own political views for a minute and contemplate the problem objectively, they'd realize that there is an organic element to the problem which far better explains the current circumstances than the radical ideas of conspiracies, bribery, and back room deals. I'm sure those happen, but they are far into the minority...

Non-digitized

[mwvdlee]

I'm assuming the non-digitized archive is still public domain, and third party digitization of this public domain information isn't covered by this contract?

Re:Derivative works

[blueg3]

T3 isn't claiming copyright.

Indiana Jones Warehouse

[HighOrbit]

Sarten-X discribes exactly what is going on. In fact, the Contracting Officer probably decided it was in the public interest to digitize and get the data public as opposed to it sitting in the bottom of a box in the proverbial Indiana Jones warehouse lost to the public forever. DoD has some boilerplate contract clauses for this, mainly 252.227-7013 Rights in Technical Data--Noncommercial Items. Alternate I, which states:

(l) Publication for sale.

(1) This paragraph only applies to technical data in which the Government has obtained unlimited rights or a license to make an unrestricted release of technical data.

(2) The Government shall not publish a deliverable technical data item or items identified in this contract as being subject to paragraph (l) of this clause or authorize others to publish such data on its behalf if, prior to publication for sale by the Government and within twenty-four (24) months following the date specified in this contract for delivery of such data or the removal of any national security or export control restrictions, whichever is later, the Contractor publishes that item or items for sale and promptly notifies the Contracting Officer of such publication(s). Any such publication shall include a notice identifying the number of this contract and the Government's rights in the published data.

(3) This limitation on the Government's right to publish for sale shall continue as long as the data are reasonably available to the public for purchase.

The point here is that sometimes the Government wants data to become available to the public (as opposed to sitting in a box in the basement) and uses commercial contractors to do it. An example would be something like this: Say somebody discovered several hundred boxes in the basement at Ft. Dix NJ of first-person interviews of soldiers during WWI and the Spanish flu. Now say university historians of WWI want access to these interviews. The historians can fly to NJ, get a hotel room, a rental car, and spend several thousand dollars and weeks digging through, cataloging, and copying the documents or alternately, the DOD can hire a contractor to digitize everything and any historian anywhere in the world can buy it for a few hundred bucks.

As usual, summary is inflammatory

[Pigeon451]

Title copied from Boing Boing, and the article there is full of hyperbole. T3 is providing digitization to the over 1 million physical media, organize and catalog everything, and then will charge a fee for access (however access for authorized government personnel is FREE). T3 is NOT claiming copyright, they just have an exclusive license for 10 years.

Check this out:
300,000 physical videos (300,000 hours!)
37,000 films (11,000 hours)
40,000 audio clips (1.5 million minutes)
700,000 still images
1.2 million digital images.

Seems reasonable to me. HALF the library is not even accessible on the internet as they are physical only. This is a good way to preserve what has been accumulated, and a lot of it is very old.

A much better summary is here:
http://gcn.com/articles/2013/12/12/dod-library.aspx