[scholarly publishing 2.0: mit goes open access]

MIT is asking its staff to contribute their articles to DSpace (a digital repository managed by MIT and HP) which will make them freely available. However, the choice remains with each staff member to grant open access to their contribution. So not sure really how well this will take off in light of several studies which suggest tenured professors prefer to publish in subscription-based publications. Also, DSpace does not contain "all MIT's research and is limited to digital research products."

From the Wall Street Journal:

"With academic journals charging libraries increasingly high subscription rates, Massachusetts Institute of Technology passed a resolution to make it easier for faculty authors to share and distribute their work for free.

MIT said faculty members will grant open access to all journal articles through DSpace, an open-source digital repository created by MIT and Hewlett Packard.

Professors usually strike up agreements to publish their works with individual journals, but once the copyright for a scholarly work belongs to that publisher, it can be difficult or impossible to reuse it for another publication or even as course material. University libraries are having a tough time keeping up with rising subscription costs.

“Scholarly publishing has so far been based purely on contracts between publishers and individual faculty authors,” says Hal Abelson, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and chair of MIT’s committee on open-access publishing. “In that system, faculty members and their institutions are powerless. This resolution changes that by creating a role in the publishing process for the faculty as a whole, not just as isolated individuals.”

Read more here.

[facebook listens to the public]

After suffering public outrage (including a Facebook group) when Facebook changed their terms of service, Facebook has reverted to the original rules:

So, the people do have a voice. Shame that didn't work when around 2 million people protested against the war in London.

[pirate philosophy @ sussex]

'Pirate Philosophy (Version 3.0): Open Access, Open Editing, Open Content, Open Media'

Speaker: Professor Gary Hall Co-Founding, Editor of Culture Machine (http://www.culturemachine.net/) And of Open Humanities Press (OHP), an open access publishing house dedicated to critical and cultural theory

Arts D110 at 5.00 Wednesday Nov 19

All Welcome

University of Sussex: Centre for Material Digital Culture/ Department of Media and Film <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/rcmdc/>

[kate pullinger: digital writers resist!]

In her article in today's Guardian, Kate Pullinger shares her ideas on the move from publishing print to publishing digitally. She raises some interesting points including how it is actually much cheaper to publish digitally (especially after fees have already been worked into a paper copy which is being converted into a digital edition) but authors are still expected to accept their *usual* 10-20% cut. Hrm...doesn't seem quite right.

"At the end of the day, the writer herself is a more valuable brand than the publishing house and it's time for writers to wake up to this fact: why should we sign contracts giving us a paltry 15% royalty in an industry where actual costs are being massively reduced overnight? Why aren't writers jumping up and down over this?"

Check out the whole article here.

[collaborative writing]

Thanks to Gavin for updating me on his cool new project.

Last year I blogged about Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan's "The Age of Conversation--a precedent-setting collaborative book by 103 authors hailing from every U.S. time zone, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, India and Oman."

This year Gavin and Drew are embarking on another collaborative (cooperative) writing project. The "kissing cousing" of last year's "book" has now title (yet) and not topic. We (as in readers of Drew and Gavin's blogs etc...) have been asked to vote on the topic via surveymonkey. Choice are between three:

• Marketing Manifesto


• Why Don't People Get It?


• My Marketing Tragedy (and what I learned)

If you would like to be involved you can begin by voting on the topic and then you can get your skates on and e-mail Drew about flexing your qwerty fingers.

Some basics for authoring hopefuls:

You will sign over all rights to your chapter

You understand that all proceeds of the book will be donated to Variety, the Children's Charity

You will promote the book, throughout the process, on your blog if you have one

You'll embrace the cooperative, collaborative spirit that defined Age of Conversation

You'll honor deadlines so Drew does not have to be a nag

You'll honor word counts so Gavin doesn't have to be a nag

[copyright and creativity]

The study, "Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video" by the Center for Social Media lists nine current ways of *using* information..."re-appropriation practises." It reminded me that copyright and fair use guidelines need to be taught alongside any of the digital literature, transliteracy or new media writing/reading that I expose my students to. As Danah Boyd says: "It's a really really really screwy system that pits little people against big corporations, stifling innovation and creativity. Yet, in order to change it, people have to understand what is taking place, what is at stake, and how to rethink the situation. This is the goal of this study."

TYPES OF USES OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS IN ONLINE VIDEOS
• Parody and satire
• Negative or critical commentary
• Positive commentary
• Quoting to trigger discussion
• Illustration or example
• Incidental use
• Personal reportage or diaries
• Archiving of vulnerable or revealing materials
• Pastiche or collage

(page 6)

Interestingly, this isn't about *copying* existing information, but commenting on it:

"This participatory spirit explains the transformativeness that marks so much quoted copyrighted material. Most online video makers incorporating copyrighted works (as opposed to those simply copying them) do not seek to replicate the services provided to them by mainstream media providers. They are sampling in order to comment, critique, illustrate, express. They are salvaging, rescuing, celebrating, heralding, bonding. They are expressing vital connections both to popular cultural expressions and also to others who share their passions and the meanings that they have created around those expressions."

(page 7)

[delayed canadian copyright reform]

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Canadian government's highly contentious plan to introduce copyright reforms...looks like the Canadian public has spoken out and managed to delay the bill:

"A controversial bill that seeks to reform Canadian copyright laws, expected to be introduced early this week, may be quashed after a groundswell of opposition erupted over the past week.

The government last week filed a notice indicating the bill would be introduced this week, leading industry experts to expect it to happen on Tuesday. But a spokesperson for Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who was to introduce the bill, said it would not happen on Tuesday and could not say if it would happen this week."

This delay seems to be in a large part thanks to Michael Geist's debate of the issue (on his blog, YouTube and through the Facebook group he started):

"Michael Geist, the Canada research chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, has led the charge against the bill and has accused Prentice of caving in to lobbying from U.S. entertainment companies, who are seeking to curtail digital copying in all its forms. He has also accused the minister of ignoring the wishes of regular Canadians and for not including the public in his consultations.

Geist started a Facebook group to protest the bill a week ago, which more than 12,000 people have so far joined. On his blog Monday, Geist wrote that the group has resulted in hundreds of letters and phone calls to Prentice and other MPs from every political party.

"Something exceptional happened this past week. Fair copyright in Canada found its voice," Geist wrote. "It will be silent no more."

Here is an interesting comment from one of Geist's readers (Written by Dale Bolton on 2007-12-11 11:30:46):

"[...] The copyright cartels will not stop until we have to pay for every instance of anything that is used. EG, I am at work right now and we are listening to a radio. The RIAA would love to charge us for every instance of us singing along with the songs, and labeling it as an unauthorized performance/duplication.

In the states, those that have the money make the laws...I thought things were different here in Canada. Apparently the Conservatives are starting to show just how American they are by accepting all these bribes..er lobbying dollars and passing whatever legislation their American Masters tell them to.

Write your MP, let them know how you feel about this. SPELL IT OUT! Tell them that copy songs to their ipods, converting videos, making copies for your car, using your PVR/VCR to record tv shows, will ALL become illegal with the new legislation they are trying to push on us. The average person breaks copyright law 90+ times a day..think about it.

Canadian laws for Canadians..no American influence needed."

"The only people who like this bill are American companies who basically see this as an opportunity to overrule Parliament,” Cory Doctorow, former director of the San Francisco-based Electronic Freedom Foundation group and co-editor of tech blog Boing Boing, said. “If Parliament passes a law that says you’re allowed to copy a video to watch it later, that law goes away the minute there’s some technology that prevents you from doing it. So, it’s not surprising that American companies would support something that allows them to have this business model without all that pesky intervention from Canada’s government."