Copyright (was PDFs and tapeworm descriptions)

Tue May 14 19:38:13 CDT 2002

I wonder whether the fighting-the-copyright is the right avenue to go. There
is a strong lobby to preserve the current distribution of information (e.g.
Mickey Mouse). There are movements against it, such as the second enclosure
movement. Where this might end is very eloquently written by Lawrence
Lessig, The future of ideas. I think, it is a very bleak outlook to our
future, especially if we don't do anything about it.

I we want to have the copyright on every little blurb or image we produce,
then we are trapped in a non-communication society.

However, why aren't WE changing our way we communicate? Why aren't we happy,
if we keep authorship and don't worry where and when our data appears again
(as long as it is cited according to current scientific standards in the
printed media); if data is being used in the commercial world, then data
might be sold, something which happens already today. Tom Moritz is
promoting the idea of a "Biodiversity Commons" which would be exactly that
we share our data, allow others to use our data to make new discoveries, or
use it for something else, such as the use of it in conservation or
education.

Examples for such a code is already introduced in the medical, genetics and
physical communities. A draft of a correspondence which will appear in the
next issue of Nature is below.

Finally, if we want to make use of the current infusion of support from the
OECD, that is hope that GBIF is producing what it is supposed to do, then we
better change our attitudes. If we allow others to use our databases, then
we might talk to the commercial publishers to follow suit.  This is
especially important, since most of the important journals are not run
anymore by institutions such as Harvard, but Macmillan et al.

In fact, on antbase.org we try to produce a solution. We have now the means
to publish the entire primary systematics literature (that is the literature
which is needed to reconstruct the entire currently valid system of ant
names, which includes all the synonyms 11,000 vs. 18,0000 in total),
published in over 600 serials and books by ca 446 authors. So far ca 600
publications are online. We are currently asking all the living and the
relatives of the recently deceased authors and publishers  to allow us to
make their publications accessible (see
http://research.amnh.org/entomology/social_insects/ants/publications/ant_onl
ine_publications_copyright.html)
The documents are right now either served as single page pdf or gif files or
as the entire publications, being downloadable directly from an authors
page, or then the Name Server, which is based on the complete and
continually updated names of all ants of the world (see for example for
Camponotus herculeanus to get the original print of the first description of
an ant by Linnaeus by clicking on the hyperlinked page number of the
original description.). This system then allows everybody to build direct
links to those pages, and we make every effort to keep the entire site
stable. Since all the pages are based on databases, anybody could write a
little script to produce for example from GenBank a direct link into the
system to retrieve the species information and links to other data such as
the publications.
A related site to see on how to deal with scientific material (including
ants and many other taxa from the Congo basin is on the new AMNH Congo Web
site http://diglib1.amnh.org.

------
ms submitted to Nature
Taxonomists need better access to published data.

Sir - The biodiversity community should learn from its counterparts in the
physical and biomedical sciences and move towards the provision of
unhindered access to its baseline data:  taxonomic descriptions, imagery,
geographical and temporal distribution, and characters - molecular,
morphological and behavioral.

International codes of nomenclature require that taxonomic actions be
published, and the data thus made available.  A great deal of the
information pertinent to those results is accessible only by examination of
the specimens involved, thus practically limiting access to all but a few
potential users.  Further, the assertion of intellectual property rights by
publishers, specifically copyright, effectively limits the distribution of
published information.  Very few libraries around the world have the
financial capacity to carry the full range of literature in which
systematics results are published.  In just one example, the ants, the
11,000 species were first formally described in approximately 3800
publications, roughly 100,000 printed pages, in over 800 serials and
monographs.  As noted in an earlier Correspondence to this journal , the
relevance of taxonomic publications remains high even after many years.
Although funding has been secured to make 80% of these pages accessible
on-line within the next two years, the results in many recent papers have
not been released into the public domain by publishers.

To chart all the species of the world is a daunting task, even only for the
ca. 1.0 - 1.5 million "known" today .  Effectively working toward that goal
will require new international initiatives, such as the Global Biodiversity
Information Facility; development of tools from information technologies;
and a new cultural approach toward the ownership and sharing of data.  The
genomics community has adopted the norm that authors place their sequence
data placed in a publicly accessible depository.  As a result, not only can
the data themselves be closely peer-reviewed, but a new areas of
investigation have developed through the comparison and collation of data
sets.  Similarly, the biodiversity and conservation communities could
greatly benefit from the provision of open access to character and
distributional data.  Because of space and cost constraints, much of this is
unpublished.  A mechanism to provide access to these data, along the lines
of GenBank, and the cultural imperative to deposit data are sorely needed.
For that information that is published, provision of open access, such as
PubMed, would be tremendous benefit by making the more recent, and more
important scientific information available to the broadest possible
community.

Donat Agosti, Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History, New
York, USA
Norm F. Johnson, Director Insets Collections, Ohio State University,
Columbus Ohio, USA

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julian Humphries" <humphries at MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU>
To: <TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 7:03 PM
Subject: Re: Copyright (was PDFs and tapeworm descriptions)

> "Susan B. Farmer" wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >But there is another aspect that one need to worry about now. That is
The
> > >DIGITAL Millennium Copyright Act which is quite different from your
standard
> > >copyright law and applies to anything is "digital" format. So, as your
WWW
> > >site declares "In fact, the frightening reality is that almost
everything on
> > >the Net is protected by copyright law."  Also, remember EU copyright
law is
> > >different from US, and for us, the critical difference is that EU
copyright
> > >protect "databases," so the Bibliotheque Nationale de France could
protect
> > >their collection of pdf pages as a database.
> >
> > That's true.  But you can't copyright non-original work (the PDFs).  You
> > can't copyright material that's already in the public domain (e.g., a
list
> > of species, or marriage records).  You can't copyright a blank form.
> > In terms of genealogical works, you can only copyright the arrangement
of
> > the material, so you probably could copyright the database structure.
> >
> >
>
> Unfortunately, most of those "can'ts" are no longer true, particularly
> in Europe.  The simple creation of a database of previously unprotected
> works grants new copyright protection to the database where those data
> reside.
>
> I quote from a recent issue of Science (Volume 293, Number 5537, Issue of
14 Sep
> 2001, pp. 2028-2031.):
>
> "Now any person or firm that expends substantial resources in compiling
data in
> the European Union has a legal right to prevent anyone else from
extracting or
> reusing all or a substantial part (whatever that means) of the contents of
the
> database for 15 years (34). Additional expenditures in maintaining the
database
> will renew the term of protection, which arguably gives European data
compilers
> perpetual rights in the data in their databases (35)."
>
> EU copyright issues are very complex, the WTO/WIPO agreements and
> subsequent harmonization requirements have resulted in very strict
copyright
> rules that allow but don't require member countries to support fair use.
> The library community in  Europe has been active in both local and EU
level
> discussions, but this is a fluid topic and I wouldn't make
generalizations.
>
> Similar database protection bills have been presented by our Congress
several
> times, and all fought successfully to date, but the current climate may
allow
> one of these to succeed.  Be diligent....
>
> Julian Humphries
> University of Texas
>
>