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

Posted by timothy on from the oh-they're-only-tax-dollars dept.

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."

8 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Legality vs Enforceability by Silentknyght · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Legality vs Enforceability by mattie_p · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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).

    2. Re:Legality vs Enforceability by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

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  2. Teabaggers strike again.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Our only hope is Obama will stop this.

  3. Re:Pictures are public, but the index isn't. by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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  4. Indiana Jones Warehouse by HighOrbit · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  5. Re:FOIA by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

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  6. As usual, summary is inflammatory by Pigeon451 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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