Tag: Information access

A story with some important implications has broken in the last few days.  It concerns items in the UK, which are out of copyright and unique and owned by the public. 

UK state bodies claim copyright of any photographs under English law and use their position as custodians to prevent access to them in this way.   This claim has never been tested and may be legally dubious even in the UK.  It is fairly certainly invalid in the US, for instance.  A great many state bodies — the British Library comes to mind — do the same, abusing their position to obstruct access to the public.  The object of the civil servants is to make money for their own institution, and let the public interest go hang. 

But now it may all come to court.  Whatever happens, that must be good news.

It seems that  the UK National Portrait Gallery has issued a copyright infringement letter to a US Wikipedia user, after he uploaded thousands of images from its website to Wikipedia.  The gallery started out pretty arrogantly, according to Techradar; the letter promptly appeared on Wikimedia.  TechRadar reports their next statement:

“The Gallery is very concerned that potential loss of licensing income from the high-resolution files threatens its ability to reinvest in its digitisation programme and so make further images available.”

They are concerned… about the loss of income.  Yes, indeed I’m sure they are.  The pictures belong to the public, the photos are paid for by the public, yet all they are concerned about is the income they can make from them.

Even in this statement, there is good news for us.  The Gallery has had to think of some reason why the public should support their actions.  They’ve had to acknowledge that “making images available” is what is expected of them.   They’ve had to acknowledge that Wikipedia making them available is in the public interest.

The gallery demands that the items be taken down, or they will sue, on the 20th July.  Let’s hope they do.  Just imagine how it works. 

First, imagine the court decides for the Gallery.  Then Wikipedia has to decide whether to pay any attention.  Wikipedia is based in the US.  It doesn’t give a damn about the UK.  So if the Gallery wants to enforce this, it has to travel to the US and convince a US judge that it is in the interests of people in the US that US people not see stuff in the UK.  The chances of this are minimal, as US courts are largely political and favour US people.  So the whole issue of daft UK copyright that harms only people in the UK will come squarely before the public eye.  In this situation, the need for a change to that law will become overpowering.

Second, imagine that the court decides against the Gallery.  This is even better, because it will bring UK law into line with US law.  It will bring an end to this copyfraud.

David Gerard rightly observes, “I can’t see this ending well for the National Portrait Gallery, whatever happens.”  But it most likely will end well for everyone in the UK.

The issue is being reported also in the Guardian, although no comment seems to be possible.

I want to go up to Cambridge tomorrow and use the library.  I have a reader’s card; although, as a mere taxpayer, I’m only given one that expires every six months, and must pay £10 for the privilege.  Since I work — in order to support CUL with my taxes — I can only go up infrequently.  To renew, I have to sit in a queue in a dim room and wait.  I’ll have to do that (again) tomorrow.

I’ve just discovered that the poor dears are getting all precious about their admissions policy.  Apparently I have to bring my passport.  Yes; I have a photo ID card that they issued, I have been coming there for 11 years, but I have to bring my passport to prove who I am?

It’s understandable that a university which gets riff-raff from around the world may need to check who they are.  But hardly in my case, when I am renewing.  They also want a recent utility bill, for the same reason.  Frankly I’ve had less demands to visit a defence establishment! 

They also want me to produce again a letter of introduction proving that I am an appropriate person to handle rare books.  I’ve had this clearance for 10 years.  Why now?  Oh, and it must be someone with intimate knowledge of my research — yes, fine, except that for a private researcher who will know this?

I won’t bore you with the further, fussy, annoying details.  It’s the whole attitude that gets me.  I, as a respectable member of the public, who pays for the whole thing, is harassed with these absurd and petty regulations.  They do not benefit the library — on the contrary, they injure its reputation — and they injure me.

Why DO libraries do these things?  I wish I were a rich man.  I would get my lawyers to sort these people out in short order.

So… wasting time today gathering documents.

Nick Nicholas’ blog also drew my attention to a scandal; a major academic publisher, Elsevier, running “fake” academic journals, which were in fact funded by a pharmaceutical company.  How bad this may be, well, I can’t tell.

Librarians — who pay for journal access, remember — are reacting strongly to this threat to the integrity of the journal system, and quite rightly too.  After all, if you can’t trust the publishers to act as gatekeepers — to keep out the rubbish and the advertising-pretending-to-be-research, your scientific research is screwed.  Terms like “corruption” have been used, and quite properly.

Such scandals undermine the reputation of the journal system.  In truth I think this is a minor hiccup.  Too many people have too much invested in the existing system for it all to go to hell very easily.

But Nick looks at the long-term trend, and how this incident may influence it (paragraphing mine).

The world is upside down, and will only get more so. If it’s not googleable, it doesn’t exist.

That’s calling much of the scholarly publishing market into question, and the medical payola scandal at Elsevier calls into question the remainder. Just found out about this today, and I’m still in shock.

Journal publishers don’t disseminate as broadly as a PDF on a website + google, and no-one cares about long-term availability anymore (not even the publishers, shirking away from paper).

Scholarly publishers’ key selling point now is their imprimatur, and once you piss that away through payola, you don’t recoup the loss of authority by blaming a rogue Australian subbranch, with staff who’ve since left your employ.

The future is… what?  Well, we don’t know.  But it won’t be paper-based journals, that’s for sure.