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Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org)Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org)Posted Aug 28, 2012 9:59 UTC (Tue) by dcoutts (guest, #5387)Parent article: Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org)
It seems to me that CC BY-ND is quite appropriate for academic work, and it would be good to have academic work included under free culture. I recently published my PhD thesis under the CC BY-ND license. It seems pretty reasonable and matches the academic culture in which it's fine to share papers around but not for other authors to make slight changes and republish like we do with software. Indeed making slight changes and republishing would be considered quite bad. I read the article they link to "Why ND Is Neither Necessary Nor Sufficient To Prevent Misrepresentation" but for academic works it's not misrepresentation that people would worry about. It'd be taking a paper, making some changes, adding a third author (so keeping attribution to the existing authors) and then republishing. It would be unclear who had done what. By contract with the normal academic approach of quoting and citing it's always very clear.
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Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 10:21 UTC (Tue) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
> It'd be taking a paper, making some changes, adding a third author (so keeping attribution to the existing authors) and then republishing. It would be unclear who had done what. By contract with the normal academic approach of quoting and citing it's always very clear.
Academics don't work this way because copyright law forbids alternatives. I think social mores are important to consider. In academia just adding yourself as an author and republishing a modified essay without significant explanation would be frowned upon, regardless of whether it was technically allowed.
I'm sure many 'open access' journals have licenses that would technically allow this kind of practise, but the reason you haven't seen it happening are that they'd *damage* the reputation of the person, not enhance it.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 12:38 UTC (Tue) by reddit (guest, #86331) [Link]
Except that it also potentially prevents things like reusing images and graphs, or doing extensive selective quoting that might not be covered by fair use.
In general, licenses force others to include the original copyright and license notice in derivative works, and some like the GPL also force others to include a list of changes.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 15:23 UTC (Tue) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] Except that it also potentially prevents things like reusing images and graphs, or doing extensive selective quoting that might not be covered by fair use.That is an apparent benefit but it of less use than it would first seem. Academic research work is supposed to be original work. The importance of being able to copy graphs or images is therefore limited. I'm also not a fan of people even just copying "common" images - this tends to just allow errors and out dated thinking to propagate in your field. If you need to re-use a graph, for example to plot against your own work you really need the underlying data and papers are not a good medium for exchanging this information. g3data can be your friend but the problem of archiving experimental data, or numerical simulation results as opposed to the high level analysis and interpretation is far from solved.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 18:46 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
but you aren't just preventing the graphs from being used in other academic works.
you are preventing them from being used by bloggers who think you have something important to say and want to use your graph on their blog.
and you are preventing a newspaper from printing your graph as part of a story.
you are preventing someone from using your graph in a powerpoint presentation to some audience that would never take the time to go find and read your academic paper on their own.
Are all these limits really worth whatever benefits you think you are getting by using copyright to prevent other researchers from trying to pass your research off as their own? (which would not be allowed anyway with the attribution requirements)
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 19:02 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
You CAN use a graph from some paper under CC-ND with proper attribution, that's covered by fair use.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 20:20 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Not all jurisdictions have fair use.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 20:55 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Then introduce provisions for it in the license text.
BTW, what jurisdictions actually forbid citations for academic purposes?
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 21:53 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
What jurisdictions forbid academic citation? The UK for one, I'm pretty certain!
In jurisdictions without fair use, the law tends to be black and white. Even a quote is - technically - a copyright violation. And while I vaguely remember something about the law changing recently, as far as I am aware, ANY copying without explicit permission of one form or another is a copyright violation in the UK.
Oh - and as to the person going on about libel and misrepresentation - you are not considering other countries. The US and UK are diametrically opposed in their implementation of libel law ... what works in one is highly unlikely to work in the other. And in the UK libel law is *totally* *ineffective* for, let's say, 95% of the population.
Cheers,
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 22:30 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
So how do academics work in the UK?
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 7:55 UTC (Wed) by njwhite (subscriber, #51848) [Link]
> So how do academics work in the UK?
The same way they do elsewhere. I don't know Wol's claim on the illegality of citation is true, but in practise it's treated sensibly; quoting a limited amount, with attribution, is expected and practised widely.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 12:56 UTC (Wed) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
"treated sensibly". Of course.
If an academic sued for copyright violation because another academic quoted him without permission, he'd probably win.
But in the long (and even short) term he'd probably lose big as his career tanked. Academics live by other academics quoting them. So even if it's technically illegal they can't sue as it would be professional death.
Cheers,
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 7:52 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
I'm not aware of any jurisdictions that forbid citations (but IANAL, etc), but re-using a graph wouldn't be considered citation in the fields I'm familiar with.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 16:20 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Citing a graph from a paper is fine in my field (biotechnology), if this graph is a subject for further analysis, for example.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 28, 2012 20:26 UTC (Tue) by bjartur (guest, #67801) [Link]
In what jurisdictions?
Do note that states write their own copyright exceptions. My state, The Republic of Iceland, allows* unlimited verbatim copying for private non-commercial use. I reckon some don't.
* This does now not apply to protected (DRM'd) software. Thank you, EEA.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 16:31 UTC (Wed) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] Are all these limits really worth whatever benefits you think you are getting by using copyright to prevent other researchers from trying to pass your research off as their own? (which would not be allowed anyway with the attribution requirements)Those are good arguments for allowing derivative works of academic graphs - my point was re-use of articles doesn't help research work much. I'm not convinced that copyright gives academic authors a net benefit at all. In practise people will use your graphs in their powerpoint presentation even if you put "all rights reserved". I am however a big fan of reading the license that you put your work under and standing by it! So if you think that "re-mixing" academic publications is a bad idea allowing it in the license you use to publish is sending the wrong message.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 14:05 UTC (Wed) by reddit (guest, #86331) [Link]
Well, obviously the use would be for books, Wikipedia articles or other kinds of material designed to teach the knowledge contained in the research paper to a wide audience.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 16:56 UTC (Wed) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] O.k. but the underlying data is still more important. Otherwise your textbook or Wiki article is going to be a jumbled mess. Authors use different symbols on graphs to mean the same thing (for example) and you rapidly end up with a confusing mess of different symbols...
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 30, 2012 1:44 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] I think you greatly underestimate the usefulness of copying some kinds of figures. In my field, one of the most common kinds of figures is a schematic representation of an experiment. Some researchers focus on method development and others on applying those methods to more interesting problems. When somebody comes up with a really useful method, it's very common for lots of other researchers to apply the same basic method to a whole host of problems. After a while, the method becomes so well known that people don't need to explain it in depth, but until that happens it would be very useful for people using the method to be able to copy the schematic explanation from the ones who developed it. I also think that literal copying is probably better as a way of avoiding errors than having each person who wants to reuse a figure create their own version from scratch. Literal copying will only reproduce errors from the original, but copying by recreating the figure will tend to reproduce those errors and provide an opportunity to introduce new errors when the copy is badly done.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 8:59 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
> I read the article they link to "Why ND Is Neither Necessary Nor
> Sufficient To Prevent Misrepresentation" but for academic works it's not > misrepresentation that people would worry about. It'd be taking a paper, > making some changes, adding a third author (so keeping attribution to the > existing authors) and then republishing. It would be unclear who had done > what. By contract with the normal academic approach of quoting and citing > it's always very clear.
Yeah, it is somewhat of a dilemma. If you can freely remix a research paper, you can definitely create situations where it is not clear who did what. You could even introduce falsehoods that might seem like they were the work of the original author. So maybe CC-BY-ND is the right thing to do here.
The confusing thing about all of this to me is that research papers are all _supposed_ to be derivative works of each other, at least in theory. Standing on the shoulder of giants, and all that. However, I imagine that the courts choose to interpret one research paper citing another (even a lengthy cite) as not creating a derived work-- otherwise academia would grind to a halt amidst copyright disputes. I imagine this is covered under fair use.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 19:21 UTC (Wed) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
> The confusing thing about all of this to me is that research papers are all _supposed_ to be derivative works of each other, at least in theory. Standing on the shoulder of giants, and all that. However, I imagine that the courts choose to interpret one research paper citing another (even a lengthy cite) as not creating a derived work-- otherwise academia would grind to a halt amidst copyright disputes. I imagine this is covered under fair use.
As Wol pointed out, litigation would be career suicide, but the bigger reason that this never happens is that academics have very little respect for copyright law anyway. This is party due to the "standing on the shoulders of giants" attitude scientists tend to have have, but exacerbated by the borderline theft perpetrated by the textbook publishers, the anti-science policies of the likes of Elseveir, and the innate sense of injustice one gets watching the MAFIAA literally destroying lives.
The amount of flagrant copyright violation that goes on in private between academics is staggering (photocopying entire chapters of textbooks, emailing PDF's of copyrighted books). This behaviour is encouraged by many, not just for convenience's sake, but as a form of protest.
One professor I knew, who seemed to have more respect for the law than most, had a textbook publisher release a new version of an introductory statistics textbook, which had no real changes, other than to jack the price up to over $200. His response was to turn his course notes into his own textbook, which is CC-licensed and sold by the university bookstore for roughly the cost of printing.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Sep 3, 2012 11:05 UTC (Mon) by grantingram (guest, #18390) [Link] Well research works are supposed to bring something new to the table: data, algorithms, analysis etc. Although you may be building on he shoulders of giants, you are not simply cutting and pasting the material.... It also depends what you mean by "cite". In my experience this means providing a reference which the reader can then see what the original paper was. Although the meaning of words varies considerably across different academic disciplines this is what the Bibtex \cite command does.... In my field it is rare that lengthy quotations or even figures from other works are included for no other reason that this reduces the space you have to discuss your own work.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Sep 5, 2012 3:17 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
"Bringing something new to the table" doesn't make something not a derived work.
> In my field it is rare that lengthy quotations or even figures
That makes sense, I suppose.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Sep 5, 2012 5:44 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
all of science is "derived work" adding to the existing knowledge and theories.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Sep 5, 2012 6:16 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
>It also depends what you mean by "cite". In my experience this means providing a reference which the reader can then see what the original paper was. Although the meaning of words varies considerably across different academic disciplines this is what the Bibtex \cite command does....
For example, overlaying your data set over a graph from another paper is pretty common. It can be done for a lot of legitimate reasons: to illustrate improvements of new methods, to highlight errors in previous works, etc.
Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 (freeculture.org) Posted Aug 29, 2012 12:04 UTC (Wed) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]
You folks may be talking about web redistribution, and the question whether page ads are commercial use, but I have always understood the NC attribute as a matter of restricting the right to publication—by which I mean real publication. As an academic, I have a need to control the publication of my dissertation in book form, because it will affect my career. And perhaps that says that CC isn't for me, and I should simply know that in advance, if the "non-commercial" restriction is actually useless. But it's not an unreal consideration.
While anecdote isn't the singular of data, here's an example of why:
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