Stevan, It is far easier for Congress to change the law than for every US researcher to insist on the proper version of CC BY, whatever that is. Plus CC BY still restricts use, hence access, for the author's lifetime plus 70 years.
David Ps: please forward this reply to the GOA list you posted your reply to. On Mar 22, 2018, at 4:42 PM, "Stevan Harnad" (via scholcomm Mailing List) <scholc...@lists.ala.org> wrote: > The copyright agreement already exists. It's called CC-BY. Authors needn't > invent it, just adopt it. > > And there is no need or justification for any delay or embargo, whatsoever. > > And "100 years or so of copyright protection" is something scholarly > journal-article authors never needed or wanted. It was just foisted on them > as a 'value added" they could not refuse. (Rather like "Make America Great > Again"...) > > (And now, back to a world where things actually move forward at a less > glacial tempo, sometimes... OA could have used a dose of the global warming > in which DW does not believe...) > > On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 12:08 PM, David Wojick <dwoj...@craigellachie.us> > wrote: > John Willinsky has a fascinating OA proposal, namely that copyright law be > changed to make research articles publicly available after a very short time. > > I have written about this proposal in some detail in my Inside Public Access > newsletter, which I have made OA to facilitate discussion. See below and also > at > http://davidwojick.blogspot.com/2018/03/public-access-limited-copyright.html > . Apologies for cross posting but this looks important as a policy proposal. > > It seems like a good idea. Given that journal articles are not written for > profit, the authors may not need 100 years or so of copyright protection. > > Comments? > > David > http://insidepublicaccess.com/ > > > Public Access limited copyright? > > The following is adapted from the March 15 issue of my newsletter: "Inside > Public Access" > > Synopsis: OA guru John Willinsky proposes that we change the copyright law to > embrace public access. It is a big step but it may make sense. > > Canadian scholar and OA guru John Willinsky (now at Stanford) has written a > thought provoking book and blog article. The basic idea is amazingly simple: > If we are going to make research articles publicly available then we should > change the copyright law to do just that. > > Here is how Willinsky puts it (speaking just of Canada): > > "Canada is recognizing that people everywhere have a right to this body of > knowledge that it differs significantly from their right to other > intellectual property (which begins well after the author’s lifetime)." > > What is true for Canada is true for America too. In fact the Canadian > government has a public access program that is similar to the US program. > > The point is that copyright law gives authors certain rights for a certain > time, that is very long (say 100 years), and the idea here is to dramatically > shorten that time for a specific set of articles, namely research articles in > journals. > > As Willinsky points out, we are already making a lot of these articles OA > (such as under the US Public Access Program) by funder mandate. Codifying > this existing practice, without the funder limitation, would be easy as far > as legislative drafting is concerned. > > Getting it passed is another matter, of course, but I can see it having > bipartisan support. The Democrats would like the health care argument for OA > and the Republicans would like the innovation and economic growth argument. > The key point is that the researcher authors are not writing to make money. > One could even argue that a lifetime+ copyright was misapplied to them in the > first place. We need the present limited embargo period of 12 months to > protect the publishing system, but that is all. > > This idea fits the fundamentals elegantly. That makes it an attractive policy. > > In fact Congress has already taken a step in this direction. Public Access > originated in the Executive Branch, but Congress has now legislated it for > the Departments of HHS (think NIH), Education and Labor. > > One possible objection is that the 12 month embargo period is too short for > some disciplines. However, the publishers have had five years to raise this > issue formally with the US Public Access agencies and to my knowledge none > has done so. > > On the other hand, some disciplines are only lightly funded by the Public > Access agencies. In that sense their case has yet to arise and they can make > it in the legislative process. I imagine that if Congress were to move in the > direction of public access copyright there would be a lot of discussion. > > Willinsky specifically mentions a Canadian government review of copyright law > that is presently getting underway. His book may even be timed for it. The > title of his blog article is Let Canada Be First to Turn an Open Access > Research Policy Into a Legal Right to Know so this clearly is a policy > proposal. > > How this Parliamentary review proceeds with regard to Willinsky's radical > public access proposal might be worth watching. In any case the US Congress > should consider it. > > Note that Richard Poynder has a lengthy discussion of, and interview with, > Willinsky here: > https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-intellectual-properties-of-learning.html > > >
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