Global Communication and Information Policy: February 2014

Friday, February 28, 2014

CSEC gets huge funding increase; watchdogs are cut

Bronskill, J. (2014). National News Watch. Retrieved Feb. 28, 2014 from
http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2014/02/27/snooping-agency-gets-big-budget-increase/#.UxDPN15kIsP

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Federal court (Canada) pushes back against copyright trolling

Article in Slaw

Thanks to CLA twitter feed.

École des Donneés / School of Data

Possibly of interest:
http://ecoledesdonnees.org/

School of Data est un projet de l’Open Knowledge Foundation lancé en mai 2012 qui a pour but de donner plus de pouvoir à la société civile en enseignant les compétences nécessaires pour réutiliser des données.
- See more at: http://ecoledesdonnees.org/#sthash.h65O1D2q.dpuf

School of Data est un projet de l’Open Knowledge Foundation lancé en mai 2012 qui a pour but de donner plus de pouvoir à la société civile en enseignant les compétences nécessaires pour réutiliser des données. - See more at: http://ecoledesdonnees.org/#sthash.h65O1D2q.dpuf

Friday, February 21, 2014

Announcing: Open Knowledge Foundation Sweden

View the Press Release for details.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Empowering smallholder farmers with open agricultural data

Twitter chat that may be of interest (thanks to new Facebook group CIARD)>

Good news: US FCC to try again on net neutrality

From the New York Times (thanks to the ALA's Social Responsibilities Round Table)

Lib2gov: free webinar series thanks to University of Maryland library and American Library Association

Details and registration for this series are available here.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

CLA Statement Regarding Federal Library Consolidation and Closure

Posted February 18, 2014 http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=14957&utm_source=CLA+statment+regarding+library+closures&utm_campaign=UA-32846026-1&utm_medium=email

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The day we fight back against mass surveillance

The internet fight back against mass surveillance is the major global communication and information policy news item for today, Feb. 11, 2014.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

EU copyright consultation: comments due Feb. 5

There's still time to participate in the EU copyright consultation! If you're looking for ideas on how to respond, note that several students in ISI 5162 have granted permission to post their responses or suggestions on how to respond.

Lisa Shaver http://isi5162.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page_4.html

Matthew Tosaj http://isi5162.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page.html

Amy-Anne Touzin http://isi5162.blogspot.ca/2014/02/invitation-to-students-to-participate.html

If you'd like to participate, Maira Sutton's page on the Electronic Frontier Foundation page is a good starting point for the links and tips about how to respond: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/what-do-you-want-copyright-tell-eu-now

Readings from Syllabus (for easier clicking)

I've noticed that the URLs in the PDF don't always work so have posted the readings list below ~

Required

Michael A. Carrier, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TPP: An Alphabet Soup of Innovation-Stifling Copyright Legislation and Agreements, 11 Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 21 (2013).
http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/njtip/vol11/iss2/1

Castells, Manuel (2004). Informationalism, networks, and the network society: a theoretical blueprint. In Castells, Manuel (ed.), The network society, a cross-cultural perspective (pp. 3-45). Northampton, Edward Elgar. Pre-publication version available at: http://annenberg.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication/~/media/Faculty/Facpdfs/Informationalism%20pdf.ashx

DeNardis, Laura (2012). Hidden levers of internet control. Information, communication & society 15(5): 720-738.

Drahos, Peter et Braithwaite, John (2004). Une hégémonie de la connaissance, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 1/2004 (n° 151-152), p. 68-79.
URL : www.cairn.info/revue-actes-de-la-recherche-en-sciences-sociales-2004-1-page-68.htm.
DOI : 10.3917/arss.151.0068.

Feenberg, Andrew (1992). Subversive rationalization: technology, power and democracy. Inquiry 35: 301-22. http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/books/Subversive_Rationalization_Technology_Power_Democracy.pdf

First Nation Public Library Strategic Liaison Community (2004). Our way forward. Strategic Plan: First Nations Public Libraries. http://www.ourwayforward.ca/

Gleeson, Deborah, Lopert, Ruth and Reid, Papparangi (2013). How the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement could undermine PHARMAC and threaten access to affordable medicines and health equity in New Zealand. Health Policy 112:3, 227-233.

Hess, C. and Ostrom, E. (2007). Introduction: an overview of the knowledge commons. In: Understanding knowledge as a commons: from theory to practice, p. 4 – 26, eds. Hess & Ostrom. Cambridge: MIT press.

International Federation of Library Associations (2010). IFLA World Report 2010: Analysis and Conclusions. http://www.ifla-world-report.org/files/uploaded/ifla_wr/IFLA-WR-2010-Analysis-and-Conclusions.pdf (53 pages) (to skim)

International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) (nd). About the association http://www.stm-assoc.org/about-the-association/

International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) (2010). Revised statement on the global economic crisis and its impact on consortial licenses. http://icolc.net/statement/revised-statement-global-economic-crisis-and-its-impact-consortial-licenses

Lessig, Lawrence (2006). Code. Version 2. New York: Basic Books. (chapter 7, What things regulate, Pp. 120-137). http://codev2.cc/download+remix/Lessig-Codev2.pdf

Lexchin, Joel (2013). Canada and access to medicines in developing countries: putting intellectual property first. Globalization and health 9:42 http://www.globalizationandhealth.com/content/9/1/42

Mansell, Robin & Tremblay, Gäetan (2013). Renewing the knowledge societies vision for peace and sustainable development. Paris: UNESCO. Pp. vii-44

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002245/224531E.pdf

McClure, Charles R. (1996). Information policy: libraries and federal information policy. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 1996, Vol.22(3), pp.214-218

Mueller, Milton, Mathiason, John R., McKnight, Lee (2004). Making sense of internet governance: defining principles and norms in a policy context, v 2.0. Internet Governance Project: Syracuse University, Convergence Centre. 26 April. http://www.institut-gouvernance.org/en/analyse/fiche-analyse-265.html

Rowlands, I. (1996). Understanding information policy: Concepts, frameworks, and research tools. Journal of Information Science 22:1, 13-25.

Stiglitz, J. (2006). Scrooge and intellectual property rights: a medical prize could improve the financing of drug innovations. BMJ British Medical Journal 333:7582 p. 1279

United Nations (1948). The universal declaration of human rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

World Economic Forum (2013). Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GAC_GlobalAgendaOutlook_2014.pdf (49 pages - lots of pictures)

World Economic Forum (n.d.). Human capital http://www.weforum.org/issues/human-capital

Zhao, Yuezhi (2004). Between a world summit and a Chinese movie: visions of the ‘information society’. http://www.sfu.ca/cmns/faculty/zhao_y/assets/documents/gazette%20article.pdf

Recommended

Abbate, Janet (1999). Inventing the internet. MIT Press. Available online via uOttawa library.

BBC News (2012). US and UK refuse to sign UN’s communication treaty. 14 December. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20717774

Canadian Library Association. Feliciter. December 2013 issue: international libraries. http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Feliciter1&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=14618

DeNardis, Laura (2010). The emerging field of internet governance. Yale Information Society Project Working Paper Series. (17 September). Available at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1678343

Directory of Open Access Journals. Subject: Library and Information Science. 146 journals. http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpId=129&uiLanguage=en

E-LIS. The open archive for library and information studies

http://eprints.rclis.org/

Fitoussi, Jean-Paul, Stiglitz, Joseph (2013). On the measurement of social progress and wellbeing: some further thoughts. Global Policy 4:3 290-203 September 2013.

International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Publications http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Resources/Publications/Pages/default.aspx

Français http://www.idrc.ca/FR/Resources/Publications/Pages/default.aspx

International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). Publications Series. http://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-publications-series

Jackson, Steve, Edwards, Paul, Bowker, Geoffrey and Knobel, Cory (2007). Understanding infrastructure: history, heuristics, and cyberinfrastructure policy. First Monday 12:6: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1904/1786

Kurbalija, Jovan. 2010. Introduction to internet governance. Geneva: DiploFoundation, pp. 1-31. http://archive1.diplomacy.edu/poolbin.asp?IDPool=1060

Mueller, Milton (2007). The politics and issues of internet governance. Institute for Debate and Research on Governance. Paris. http://www.institut-gouvernance.org/en/analyse/fiche-analyse-265.html

Mueller, Milton (2012). ITU phobia: why WCIT was derailed. Internet Governance Project (IGP) Blog. 18 December. http://www.internetgovernance.org/2012/12/18/itu-phobia-why-wcit-was-derailed/

Pinch, Trevor J. & Bijker, Wiebe E. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts, or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science 14:3 (August 1984): 399-441.

Star, Susan Leigh (1999). The ethnography of infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist 43:3: 377-391.

Winner, Langdon (1980). Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus 109:1: 121-136. http://innovate.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Winner-Do-Artifacts-Have-Politics-1980.pdf

e-lis: case study example

I have posted a sample case study of E-LIS on my blog, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics. The text follows along with a sample of the comments I'd write if a student submitted this work and the mark I'd assign (a B-).

e-lis: e-prints in library and information science

A case study example for ISI 5162, Global Communication and Information Policy Winter 2014

Heather Morrison

E-LIS http://eprints.rclis.org/ is the open access archive for library and information science (LIS). My perspective, as an open access advocate, former member of the E-LIS editorial and governance teams and current passionate supporter of this initiative, is that E-LIS is an excellent illustration of good practices in open access, library and information science, and global collaboration in action. E-LIS provides a venue for LIS authors and journals to meet open access requirement policies that are increasingly common among research funders and universities. On the flip side, services like E-LIS, by providing this venue, make it easier for decision-makers (journals, publishers, research funders and universities) to develop open access policies, by removing one of the potential objections (i.e. no venue).

Open access literature, according to Suber (n.d.), is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions”. Open access was defined in 2002 at three major international meetings, held at Budapest, Berlin and Bethesda; the resulting definition is called the BBB definition of open access (Suber, n.d.).

The first of these meetings was the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) (2002), which in addition to defining open access, developed a visionary statement which from my perspective is less often quoted, but of greater significance, particularly in the context of global communication and information policy. The words are carefully crafted and beautifully expressed, and so repeated here in full:

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge (Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002).

E-LIS exemplifies the spirit of the Budapest vision, in my opinion. The E-LIS

team consists of the generous hosting and support services provided by the CILEA consortium in Italy, a governance team including E-LIS co-founders Antonella de Robbio and Imma Subirats, whose work in this initiative I have described earlier on the OA Librarian blog (Morrison, 2005a; Morrison, 2005b), and volunteer editors from around the globe. Information about E-LIS can be found on the E-LIS About page http://eprints.rclis.org/information.html which includes a statement that dovetails with the BOAI vision: “Searching or browsing e-LIS is a kind of multilingual, multicultural experience, an example of what could be accomplished through open access archives to bring the people of the world together”. From a personal perspective, to me this is a major and refreshing change from the typical western-centric focus of most search engines found in North American libraries. Not every archive is fully open access, however E-LIS has a strong commitment to open access and does not accept works unless the full text is openly available.

The global E-LIS team can work with any language that LIS scholars might wish to use to participate in this initiative. Currently 22 languages are supported; all works are expected to have abstracts in English. English and Spanish are the most common languages. Most of the works in E-LIS are peer-reviewed journal articles, and many other types of works are of similar scholarly quality, such as refereed conference proceedings and theses, as described by Morrison, Subirats-Coll, Medeiros and De Robbio (2007) in an invited, non-refereed article in The Charleston Advisor.

As explained in BOAI (2002), there are two basic approaches to open access, open access publishing or making works open access in the process of publishing, sometimes known as the gold road, and open access archiving, making works open access through archives or repositories, sometimes called the green road. There are two major different types of open access archives, institutional archives (or repositories) and disciplinary or subject repositories. E-LIS is an example of the latter. Some of the best-known subject open access archives are PubMedCentral, arXiv (for physics, math, computing science and related disciplines), and the Social Sciences Research Network. Seamless searching and full-text retrieval are key attractions of subject based archives.

Libraries are frequently the host of their institutional repositories or archives; for example, see the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ (n.d.) Institutional Repositories page. From my perspective, this presents a challenge to E-LIS as a subject archive, as libraries working to build and support a local institutional repository may see deposit in a subject repository like E-LIS as extra work at best and as competition at worst. It is my hope that in time LIS professionals, once institutional repositories become the ubiquitous service that I hope and expect they will become, will return to the vision of the “unprecedented public good” of a global, multilingual and multicultural service like E-LIS, and work to cross deposit all LIS articles in BOTH the local institutional repository and E-LIS, and that, in time, E-LIS will not only be a good option for searching for LIS scholarship, but the first, and often the only stop.

References

Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), 2002. Retrieved Feb. 4, 2014 from

http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read

Canadian Association of Research Libraries. N.d. Institutional Repositories Project.

Website. Retrieved Feb. 4, 2014 from http://carl-abrc.ca/en/scholarly-communications/carl-institutional-repository-program.html

Morrison, H.; Subirats-Coll, I.; Medeiros, N. and De Robbio, A. (2007). E-LIS: the Open

Archive for Library and information Science. The Charleston Advisor vol. 9, n. 1. Retrieved Feb. 4, 2014 from http://eprints.rclis.org/10158/

Morrison, H. 2005a. Antonella de Robbio. OA Librarian. Retrieved Feb. 4, 2014 from

http://oalibrarian.blogspot.ca/2005/11/antonella-de-robbio.html

Morrison, H. 2005b. Imma Subirats Coll. OA Librarian. Retrieved Feb. 4, 2014 from

http://oalibrarian.blogspot.ca/2005/12/imma-subirats-coll.html

Suber, P. n.d. Open access overview. Retrieved Feb. 4, 2014 from

http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

Comments and mark: overall, not bad - you appear to know the initiative and open access quite well and this shows some good analysis and interesting ideas. On the other hand it looks like you threw this piece of writing together in about an hour and could have done a much better job with more effort. For example, the text is a bit short – only 4 pages – and a substantial amount of this is direct quotes. There is a lot of self-citation and this work would benefit from a broader literature review. B- (HM)

Monday, February 3, 2014

Our way forward (reading for Feb. 4)

the link for tomorrow's reading is http://www.ourwayforward.ca/

The long URL in the syllabus is not working.

Invitation to students to participate in EU copyright consultation

Thanks to Amy-Anne Touzin for this information on how students can easily participate in the European Union copyright consultation (deadline Feb. 5):

To students of the School of Information Studies at University of Ottawa:

The European Commission (EC) has opened public on the copyright reform for the European Union, legislation that will impact copyright policy in Canada. Now, before February 5, is the time to have your voice heard on this import issue for information professionals.

As busy students, an easy way to have your say is to visit the website copywrongs.eu developed by group of workshop participants at a recent Chaos Communication Congress. All you have to do is visit the website, select a copyright issue that is of interest to you, and fill out the comment box. A standard response to the question “I feel that copyright duration is excessively long” has been developed for your use.

Should you choose to develop a different message and/or respond to another question, you are encouraged to share this response by posting it to this blog.

In today’s global economy, decisions made for the European Union on copyright reform set precedents in turn putting pressure other countries to conform. Balanced copyright legislation is important. If copyright is skewed, negative impacts ensue society: access to information and cultural production is reduced, innovation and growth in the economy is obstructed. Let us ensure that we have a voice in the debate.

Standard Response to “I feel that copyright duration excessively long”

As a student of the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa, I am concerned that the length of copyright duration in the EU is excessively long.

If copyright is extended or remains as life of the artist plus 70 years, EU citizens, as well as their culture and scholarship will be placed at a strategic disadvantage. Taking into consideration that few copyrighted works are commercially available, and that orphan works present a challenge to digitization, long copyright terms inhibit access to literature, music, art and scholarship. As such, copyright obstructs learning, innovation and economic growth.

To achieve its intended outcome, copyright is meant to benefit all of society, and not solely to protect the interests of corporate bodies. During this consultation, the public has been asked to consider whether the current copyright terms are appropriate in a digital age. I would argue that today’s copyright protection policies are too restrictive. Decentralized production characterizes the knowledge economy. Content consumers are also content producers and not everyone is motivated to created because of copyright. Evidence of this can be found all over the Internet. For example, many are choosing to customize copyright for their work through creative commons licenses. Restrictive copyright laws hinder innovation, knowledge production and sharing.

Copyright is intended to ensure that incentives and rewards are in place for content producers. Since profit margins for most works are only high for a short period after publication, there would be no more incentive to artists were copyright periods to be extended.

The Berne convention states that copyright should extend 50 years after the life of an artist. Countries should not attempt a race to the bottom by extending copyright terms in favour of large corporations, who are the only beneficiaries to such policy.

As the European Commission considers the duration of copyright protection, evidenced-based decisions factoring in broad social and economic growth should be priorities over the economic interests of a few. Decisions made for the European Union on copyright reform set precedents in turn putting pressure other countries to conform. Balanced copyright legislation is important. If copyright is skewed, negative impacts ensue society: access to information and cultural production is reduced, innovation and growth in the economy is obstructed. Let us ensure that the EU is not racing to the bottom.