Thursday, May 17, 2012

book room #8: farzana doctor




Toronto novelist, Farzana Doctor was my guest a couple of weeks ago in the Book Room.

Ms. Doctor has just returned from an extensive international tour of the northeastern United States and Ontario, promoting her second novel, Six Metres of Pavement, from Toronto's Dundurn Press. We talk about that novel, the life of a writer, book promotion, and the acoustics of the spectacular St. Anne's Anglican Church on Gladstone Avenue in Toronto.

My deepest appreciation to Dan Norman, Director of Music at St. Anne's Church for permission to record a bit of choir practice, to the choir members themselves who are always in excellent voice, and to Gary van der Meer, Priest in Charge.

Thanks for hanging in with the Book Room. I've had to pull back from the weekly schedule, as that was just crazy what with a full-time job, a couple of kids and a couple of books in progress. But I am loving doing the interviews and the reading, and I will keep loading them as I get them done.

This past week, I had a great interview with poet and novelist Jonathan Bennett, which I will load as soon as I finish the editing. As well, I'm off to Montreal for the holiday weekend, where I will be interviewing poet David McGimpsey and anyone else I happen across on the sun-drenched streets of the old town.

You can also find the Book Room on Facebook, if that's how you roll, and you can subscribe to it on iTunes. Enjoy it, and share it. Thanks.


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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

refusing to pay for work used, and stifling academic freedom - the more principled approach?


Canada's free culture cheerleading squad is today making much of the University of British Columbia's decision to forgo collective licensing through Access Copyright. Ariel Katz (one of the head cheerleaders) has placed his own employer (University of Toronto) in what he calls the Fair Dealing Hall of Shame while celebrating the left-coast announcement. U of T, which pays Prof. Katz for his work, signed a deal with Access Copyright long ago because it also respects the work of Canadian artists. UBC, for its part, has declared that its decision to not pay artists through collective licensing represents the more principled approach. Following their logic, not paying for something you intend to use, or just flat out ignoring illicit activity on campus are each far more principled and high-minded approaches to copyright compliance than simply paying artists a fair price for their work.

Here's how sustainable, and principled, and just plain easy the UBC is making life for their professors and students (from the UBC copyright compliance explanation page). The parentheses are mine, as if you couldn't tell:


Using content from the Web:

Materials available on the Internet is [sic] copyrighted in the same way as print and other formats, even if there is no copyright symbol or notice. Linking directly to the web page containing the content you wish to use is almost always permissible [a legally unproven assertion], although you need to make sure that the content you are linking to is not in and of itself infringing copyright [please obtain an IP law degree before continuing]. If there are signs that the web site contains content posted without the permission of the copyright owner [pirate flag logo, anti-corporate blather, etc.], you should avoid linking to it. You should check the website’s ‘Terms of Use’ section to confirm whether it has any specific linking prohibitions [still considering using this material? really?]. If there are none, you may link to the website but make sure that the webpage opens up in a different browser window [because if you distance yourself from the use by an extra browser window, you're not actually using the material?]. If the web-page does not clearly identify the website and content owner, you should also include the full details of the author, copyright owner and source of the materials by the link [you have all the extra time in the world for this level of detail in course planning, right?]. This will avoid any suggestion that the website is your own material or that your website is somehow affiliated with the other site. The website’s ‘Terms of Use’, or ‘Legal Notices’ section may also confirm whether specific consents have been provided by the copyright owner to allow use of the website’s materials. In some cases [to be determined by you, not us], you may be able to use the website materials for free for non-commercial and educational purposes. However, please note that if the website, including the Terms of Use or Legal Notices sections do not provide any consents relating to use of website materials, you should assume that copyright consents are required from the copyright owner [and that means you do not have permission from UBC to use those materials in your teaching].

And here's how I interpret these convoluted "helpful" instructions:

Since the Access Copyright licences will cover web-based materials (as well as print materials) under copyright, each and every use of materials (including web links) will have to be thoroughly pre-vetted by individual professors before being used, to make sure they are not covered by Access Copyright licensing. If, after onerous pre-vetting, it is determined the material cannot be had for free by the university, the professor will not be permitted to use it. Even if the material is deemed to be essential to the teaching of the course, it will not be permitted.

Academic freedom? What's that now?

What is the likelihood UBC professors and students will be using Access Copyright repertoire materials in licensable ways? I estimate, conservatively, the likelihood at 100%*, which will place them legally offside and subject to a Copyright Board-certified tariff.

The end result being that UBC pays later exactly what they are refusing to pay right now. But, at least, they will have struck a blow for free culture theory and sent the important and principled message to Canada's artists that our universally declared human right to be compensated for use of our work ends at the corner of Blanca Street and University Boulevard in West Vancouver.



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* It took me less than two minutes of web searching to find an upcoming UBC humanities course that includes coursepack materials unlikely to be covered by fair dealing or private licensing:

Course pack containing: Christine Jorgensen’s memoir “The Story of My Life” (1953), Mark Shane’s pulp novel Sex Gantlet to Murder (1955), a selection of short stories, press clippings, historical medical scholarship, and critical readings.



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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Groucho joins the free culture movement



North America's free culture crusaders have been very busy lately trying to disrupt the progress of two international trade agreements, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Why does free culture hate these agreements? Because they contain provisions for the protection of intellectual property and copyright across borders. Protecting copyright and free culture don't mix.

Free culture lobbyists have been attacking international IP protection since long before the recent SOPA/PIPA "consumer protest" organized by Silicon Valley. The Berne Convention of 1886, the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) of 1996, and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) (also 1996) are all regular targets of the philosophy of free. The smaller the organized international consensus on copyright, obviously, the better things are for the anarchistic nature state that favours Google and other so-called "fair use" businesses that like to monetize other people's work. Therefore, disrupting international agreements is key to the free culture model.

So, for the past year or so we've seen Michael Geist et al ramp up what is now a very recognizable populist campaign of panic against the trade talks. ACTA and TPP will, of course, break the Internet and lock us all into some sort of corporate slavery... or something like that. The inflammatory rhetoric about lack of transparency, the encouraging of ill-informed street protests, the exaggeration of the overall level of concern. We've seen it all before, and what it boils down to is disruption of process for democratically elected governments.

Fair enough. Nobody said democracy was neat and tidy, and everyone has the right to protest.

Everyone... even Jeffrey T. Spaulding, the character played by Groucho Marx in the 1930 film classic, Animal Crackers.

At least, I think that's Groucho listed at the bottom of a recent open letter to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk, protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership process.


I was directed to this open letter through a nasty article on the blog TechDirt, which as far as I can tell really, really does not like anyone who likes copyright. I read the open letter and took a quick survey of the signatories. Now, I'm not the world's greatest Marx brothers fan, but I did teach my kids to do Harpo and Groucho's mirror routine from Duck Soup when they were, like, five years old. Could there really be a Professor Jeffrey T. Spaulding at the Claude W. Pettit College of Law at Ohio Northern University? Well... no, there couldn't be, and there isn't. That's "Professor" Spaulding in the film still at the top of this posting, at a faculty brunch with two colleagues.

I guess free culture doesn't require actual, non-fictional, existence for participation in their authoritative open-letter campaigns. I wonder if Prof. Rufus T. Firefly will sign on next?

Hail Freedonia!


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Thanks to Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios for the Marx Brothers image.

UPDATE (Friday, May 11): Groucho has been kicked out of the free culture movement for pranksterism and expressing opinions not in line with the principles of free culture. His character name has been removed from the open letter. He has not been seen since.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

the price of free, the key to open



Open Medicine, a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal is celebrating five years of open-access publication. They have published an editorial in their most recent online issue analysing their experience of the past five years.

Open-access publication is one of the revolutionary new models being touted by the free culture movement in Canada to take the place of privately-owned, subscription-based publication and collectively licensed copyright royalty payment to authors. Open-access style journals like Open Medicine are often cited by free culture boosters as the future of publishing, a way to freely spread knowledge throughout the world.

In an earlier article, Open Medicine noted that open-access articles reach a broader readership and are far more often cited and quoted in the media than subscription controlled publications. That is potentially a very good argument indeed for free distribution models. Authors interested in growing readership and building their brand have always made the connection between audience-size and reputation.

What's missing, unfortunately, is a way to pay for all that fabulous free distribution. Five years into their bold experiment, Open Medicine has published a great deal of important work and sparked innumerable conversations and debates. What they haven't done, sadly, is make publishing any less expensive than it always was.

From their five-year anniversary editorial:

Although our open access publishing platform removes many barriers to the timely dissemination of new research, we have struggled to create a sustainable economic model for publishing the journal. The core editorial group is a volunteer, collaborative, professional team. The journal receives funding from individuals and from various Canadian research libraries who generously support our open access vision. More recently, we have implemented modest publication fees to allow us to sustain the production of high-quality articles by paying for professional copy-editing and article production. At this point, we are considering a variety of economic models aimed at sustaining and expanding the journal, including leveraging developing partnerships with like-minded organizations.
Open Medicine's policies page reveals the modest publication fees are C$1500 for research and review articles and C$600 for commentary and analysis articles. Modest? What is modest about turning what used to be a paying gig (writing) into one that costs the writer $1500 a pop? I call that bold, not modest.

To be clear, privately-owned, subscription-based publishers may not pay writers as much as we'd like, but they DO pay writers. Furthermore, they tend to let writers retain their copyright and collect royalties for commercial uses covered by collective licensing, royalties that can come to thousands of dollars per year. Open access journals tend to publish under Creative Commons licenses, which allow for free re-use and therefore no license royalties.

More people reading important medical research papers? Bravo! Writers paying for their own publication, and surrendering downstream revenue opportunities? Not so much.


It's great to break down barriers and spread knowledge as broadly as possible, but someone has to pay for it, and it shouldn't be the writers. One of the loud free-culture complaints against collective licensing for academic materials is that the poor students will have to pay the fee (currently $26 per year). But who is paying for open-access publishing? Academic researchers and writers are salaried employees of the academy. Universities are official sponsors of open-access journals like Open Medicine. Where do university budgets for sponsorship and salaries come from? Tuition. Who pays tuition (currently well over $5,000 per year on average)? That's right, the poor students.

Open-access may be breaking ground on distribution, but it has a long way to go before it can make any claims about being a sustainable alternative to traditional publishing, or a cheap alternative to collective licensing.

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Monday, May 07, 2012

naming names - the free culture witch hunt is on


Canadian free-culture lobbyist, Howard Knopf has loaded an astonishing bit of video onto his website.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what Mr. Knopf believes he is proving with these video selections - perhaps something to do with the influence of the Hollywood lobby on the recent SOPA annd PIPA legislation debacle in the United States. Whatever Knopf's point, it would take someone completely blinded by ideological zeal to think that the sight of a US Congressperson browbeating a witness and demanding names is the kind of thing that helps the cause of "free" culture.

So, here you go... here's Representative Zoe Lofgren questioning Ms. Maria A. Pallante, Register of Copyrights for the U.S. Copyright Office concerning statements Pallante made about copyright and the SOPA and PIPA bills. Rep. Lofgren is the Congresswoman for California's 16th District, which includes Silicon Valley, home base for all of the large, corporate tech firms who lobbied so hard against legislation designed to stop online piracy and protect intellectual property. This questioning took place last month.






I couldn't be more impressed by Ms. Pallante's calm and courageous responses to the increasingly insulting and accusational tone of the questioning she endured. Rep. Lofgren's insistence on knowing the names of everyone present at all of Ms. Pallante's meetings implies that some present  may wish to hide their involvement, which is absurd. After smilingly admitting to the constituent pressure she herself is under, and reading copyright opinions that come straight from Silicon Valley's free culture manual, it takes some kind of shamelessness for the Congresswoman to suggest there was undo influence on a public servant who is appointed rather than elected. As well, Ms. Pallante showed impressive restraint in not simply laughing at the question about copyright law being for authors first, instead directing Rep. Lofgren to the section of the U.S. Constitution, supporting legislation, and Supreme Court decisions that support her view.

But, wow, how did Ms. Pallante manage to stay in her seat when Rep. Lofgren introduced, from left field, totally unrelated information about an alleged sexual discrimination case in the Library of Congress, having nothing to do with any of the people present or the topic at hand? This is where Silicon Valley is going with their free cultural revolution? Public shaming and witch hunts? I offer this possible answer for the next time Ms. Pallante finds herself in such a ridiculous line of questioning.



Thanks for the video clips, Mr. Knopf. Keep digging up this ugly, terrifying stuff from the very, very bottom of free culture's barrel. People need to know what's actually happening in the name of free movie downloads on Swedish torrent sites.

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