Elsevier Ramps Up Its War On Access To Knowledge

from the shameful-behavior-from-a-shameful-company dept

We just recently wrote about the terrible anti-science/anti-knowledge/anti-learning decision by publishing giant Elsevier to demand that Academia.edu take down copies of journal articles that were submitted directly by the authors, as Elsevier wished to lock all that knowledge (much of it taxpayer funded) in its ridiculously expensive journals. Mike Taylor now alerts us that Elsevier is actually going even further in its war on access to knowledge. Some might argue that Elsevier was okay in going after a "central repository" like Academia.edu, but at least it wasn't going directly after academics who were posting pdfs of their own research on their own websites. While some more enlightened publishers explicitly allow this, many (including Elsevier) technically do not allow it, but have always looked the other way when authors post their own papers.

That's now changed. As Taylor highlights, the University of Calgary sent a letter to its staff saying that a company "representing" Elsevier, was demanding that they take down all such articles on the University's network.

The University of Calgary has been contacted by a company representing the publisher, Elsevier Reed, regarding certain Elsevier journal articles posted on our publicly accessible university web pages. We have been provided with examples of these articles and reviewed the situation. Elsevier has put the University of Calgary on notice that these publicly posted Elsevier journal articles are an infringement of Elsevier Reed’s copyright and must be taken down.

Taylor's analysis of this is worth reading. He basically notes that any shred of a chance for Elsevier to fix their reputation is now gone. In the past, he'd suggested ways that the company could better interact with academics and librarians to rebuild its reputation -- but this basically crosses the point of no return.

Because this is, obviously, a very short-term move. Whatever feeble facade Elsevier have till now maintained of being partners in the ongoing process of research is gone forever. They’ve just tossed it away, instead desperately trying to cling onto short-term profit. In going after the University of Calgary (and I imagine other universities as well, unless this is a pilot harassment), Elsevier have declared their position as unrepentant enemies of science.

In essence, this move is an admission of defeat. It’s a classic last-throw-of-the-dice manoeuvre. It signals a recognition from Elsevier that they simply aren’t going to be able to compete with actual publishers in the 21st century. They’re burning the house down on their way out. They’re asset-stripping academia.

Elsevier are finished as a credible publisher. I can’t believe any researcher who knows what they’re doing is going to sign away their rights to Elsevier journals after this.

Of course, there's a legal-geek part of me that hopes that Elsevier takes that last step off the ledge of insanity and actually files a lawsuit against a University (or, even more ridiculous, an academic author), and we get to see the mother of all copyright battles concerning fair use. Remember, in the US, among the key areas where fair use is likely to be found are "teaching, scholarship or research." That's in the statute itself. So, go ahead, Elsevier, bring it on.

The University of Calgary is up in Canada and it has somewhat different rules, including fair dealing, rather than fair use. But the Supreme Court there appears to be quite supportive of fair dealing, especially in academic settings. Other reports note that the company has been similar notices to US-based colleges as well.

Why Elsevier has decided to declare such a war on access is anyone's guess, but it's not going to end well.

Filed Under: access to information, copyright, dmca, education, journals, knowledge, open access, research, takedowns, universities, war on access
Companies: elsevier

Patenting University Research Has Been A Dismal Failure, Enabling Patent Trolling. It's Time To Stop

from the fix-this dept

For many years we've been incredibly critical of the famous Bayh-Dole Act, which was passed in 1980 with the idea that it would encourage greater innovation by pushing universities to patent the research they were doing. The theory -- based on a rather ignorant view of innovation and research -- was that patents would create a market, which, in turn, would enable easier knowledge transfer from academia to industry, leading to a research boom. The actual results have been a near total disaster. What's actually happened are two very bad things. First, it's seriously harmed university research, by guaranteeing much less information sharing between researchers. And, it turns out, that information sharing is a big part of how innovation and big scientific breakthroughs occur. Not surprisingly (if you understand basic economics), when you try to lock up each idea with a patent, researchers (and, more importantly, their administrator bosses), suddenly don't want to share any more. The end result? Lots of important research stifled. What a shame.

The second massive problem in the wake of the Bayh-Dole Act was that every university stupidly thought that it would help make them rich. They bought into the myth of patents and this idea of "tech transfer," and pretty much every research university set up a "tech transfer" office, whose main job was to try to "license" those patents for as much money as possible. University administrators started licking their chops at this potential profit center. But, over the past couple decades, reality has set in. As we've noted for years, ideas are a very, very small piece of the puzzle for innovation. It's the execution that matters. But the folks working in tech transfer offices never understood that and have tried to put ridiculously high prices on their patents, in an attempt to justify their own existence. End result? The exact opposite of the stated goal of the Bayh-Dole Act: less research got transfered into industry, because various tech transfer offices priced it out of the market.

We've pointed out in the past that this expected "profit center" has been a disaster for nearly every university that tried it. With only a handful of exceptions (Stanford, MIT, etc.) tech transfer offices have cost more than they've ever made... while serving to lock up important research, limit collaboration and generally cost the university money that could have gone elsewhere. Oh, and then the trolls came in. We've discussed plenty of times in the past how Intellectual Ventures is the world's largest patent troll, but what few people pay attention to is how it got its patents. That's the nasty secret. The crew at IV saw all the problems with tech transfer offices and saw an opportunity: IV went around from university to university and offered to buy patents in bulk. Desperate tech transfer offices, needing to show some revenue coming in gobbled up the offers, and voila, a giant massive patent troll with tens of thousands of patents was born -- often based on research that was funded by taxpayer dollars.

This appears to be a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to billionaire Nathan Myhrvold, thanks to a bad law that has harmed research, damaged the advance of science and knowledge, harmed university finances and decreased actual innovation. Remember, IV has never produced a single product and brought it to market.

And, tragically, almost no one is talking about all of this, even with patent reform being considered. Hopefully that will start to change. A new report from the Brookings Institution doesn't go into all of this background, but does highlight what a complete and utter failure university tech transfer offices have been.

Using tech transfer office expenses information, Valdivia estimates that 130 universities did not generate enough licensing income in 2012 to cover the wages of their technology transfer staff and the legal costs for the patents they file. What is more, with 84% universities operating technology transfer in the red, 2012 was a good year because over the last 20 years, on average, 87% did not break even.

In fact, the report notes that just 8 universities made up 50% of the licensing revenue. Basically, you've got a huge number of universities that are a giant cost center whose only job is to hold up innovation.

The report has some suggestions as to how this should change, noting that universities, rather than focusing on patents, should instead focus on helping spin out actual startups. On top of that, Congress should change the law to allow for, at the very least, an exemption for non-profit research or experimentation. Those aren't bad recommendations, but it seems like Congress could and should go much, much further.

Either way, it should be recognized what a complete disaster Bayh-Dole has been for basic research, and how it, indirectly, helped create a massive patent troll. Hopefully Congress will finally wake up to its mistake and fix this.

Filed Under: bayh-dole, licensing, patent trolls, patents, research, tech transfer, universities
Companies: intellectual ventures

Universities Struggle To License Their Patents, In Desperation Team Up With Patent Trolls

from the exactly-wrong dept

A few months back, we wrote about the University of California's plan to lock up even more knowledge in the form of patents, in the hope that this would bring in lots of cash. But as Techdirt has reported time and again over the years, patenting research does not bring in more money to fund further research, in fact it probably doesn't bring in any money at all, once you allow for the costs of running tech transfer offices. Moreover, there's evidence that making the results of research freely available is much better for the wider economy than trying to turn them into intellectual monopolies.

A recent article in Nature confirms that the whole idea of patenting research is pretty much a disaster -- universities are now finding that after they have gone to all the trouble and expense of obtaining patents, nobody wants to license them:

Joy Goswami, assistant director of the technology-transfer office at the University of Delaware in Newark, estimates that only about 5% of patents are licensed at most universities. The rest are a drain on office resources, he adds, because of required maintenance and legal fees.

You might hope universities would draw the obvious conclusion -- the underlying premise of the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act that started this mad rush towards patenting university work was wrong -- and go back to concentrating on producing and publishing great research. Instead, they are teaming up with patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures:

"As universities struggle to find revenue sources, one might worry that the monetization industry will be very tempting," says Robin Feldman, director of the Institute for Innovation Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. There are already signs that this is happening, she adds. Last year, she published evidence that 45 universities around the world licensed or sold patents to Intellectual Ventures shell companies.

As the Nature article notes, that violates the spirit of a 2007 memo endorsed by more than 100 institutions, which offered guidance for ethical patent licensing, and specifically warned of the risks of dealing with "patent aggregators". By selling their patents to outfits like Intellectual Ventures, universities risk completing their evolution from respected institutions that serve the public by sharing knowledge, to a bunch of desperate money-chasers that actively harm it by turning their discoveries into yet more ammunition for ruthless patent trolls.

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Filed Under: patent trolls, patents, tech transfer, universities

Obama Administration Decides Not To Fight Against Fair Use For Public Universities

from the good-news dept

A couple weeks ago, we wrote about some growing concern that, due to the US Copyright Office's pressure, the Justice Department was seriously considering filing a brief in an important case about fair use. The fear was that the Copyright Office's simplistic argument would carry over to the DOJ, and that could have a massive negative impact on the basic concept of fair use.

Thankfully, the story got a fair bit of attention, and we heard that a lot of people spoke out and more feedback than expected showed up on the DOJ's doorstep, including from some folks in Congress, who were concerned about the possibility of hurting fair use in the educational setting. The end result? The DOJ has chosen not to weigh in after all. While it may seem like not such a big deal to get a government agency to not do something, from a variety of sources, it appears that the Copyright Office and the DOJ were very, very serious about filing something. It's not yet clear if the public speaking out led to the change of heart, but either way, it's good to see the administration back down. Having the federal government argue against fair use and in favor of (mostly foreign) big publishers was just never a good idea, and thankfully they realized that in time.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, doj, e-reserves, fair use, georgia state, libraries, universities

Obama Administration Considers Joining Publishers In Fight To Stamp Out Fair Use At Universities

from the pure-insanity dept

Okay, this is really quite unfortunate. In 2011, we wrote about an important copyright case involving three publishers suing Georgia State University for daring to have "e-reserves" that allow professors to make certain works available to students electronically via the university library. Nancy Sims, copyright librarian for the University of Minnesota, wrote a guest post summarizing the case for us as follows:

The publisher-plaintiffs are suing over the way instructors (and possibly others on campus) share course readings like academic articles and excerpts from academic books. They are objecting both to readings posted on course websites (i.e., uploaded by instructors and accessible only to students registered for a course) and readings shared via "e-reserves" (i.e., shared online through university libraries, usually also with access restricted to students registered for the course). The publishers claim that sharing copies of readings with students is not usually a fair use, that faculty can't really be trusted to make their own calls about what is or is not fair use, and that permissions fees should be paid for most of these uses.

Thankfully, last year, we wrote about how the district court issued an astounding 350-page ruling that basically said that most of these electronic reserves were clearly fair use. We had some issues with the way the judge went about the analysis -- often coming up with random and arbitrary standards for the amount of a work that could be used while remaining fair use, but, on the whole, it was good to see the judge support fair use relatively strongly (and, in some cases, to not even get to a fair use analysis by saying that the use was allowed as "de minimis" copying).

Of course, no matter what happened, the other side was going to appeal. We're getting closer to the appeals court hearing the case, but something interesting popped up last week. In a somewhat surprising move, the Justice Department jumped in and asked the court for some more time for the filing of amicus briefs from concerned third parties, because it was considering weighing in on the case. The Justice Department? Why should it be interested in a dispute concerning whether or not public university libraries are engaged in fair use by making works available to students?

In digging into this, we've heard from a few sources that it's actually the US Copyright Office that has asked the DOJ to weigh in on the side of the publishers and against the interests of public univerisities and students. Yes, the same Copyright Office that just promoted a former RIAA VP to second in command. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Let's be clear: it is flat out ridiculous that the Obama Administration may be supporting the publishers here. Two out of the three publishers are foreign publishing giants, and it would be supporting them against a public university library tasked with helping to educate students. The entire purpose of copyright law is supposed to be to promote the progress of learning. The copyright clause in the Constitution used "science" but back in that era "learning" and "science" were effectively synonymous. The very first Copyright Act in the US was actually titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning." Current copyright law is explicit that fair use covers this sort of situation:

the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

And yet... these publishers, along with the US Copyright Office and (perhaps) the DOJ, would like to ignore all of this, and reject fair use in such public learning centers? It is ridiculous. Oh, and did we mention that the lawsuit by these publishers is really being funded by the Copyright Clearance Center (who, shockingly, would be in charge of collecting fees for such uses...) and the American Publishers' Association? If the Obama Administration wanted to appear any more in the pocket of "Big Copyright" and against the public interest when it comes to learning and education, I'm not sure of any better position to take.

This is just a year after the SOPA fight, and it appears that the Copyright Office, led by Maria Pallante, who was a massive supporter of SOPA, has not learned the lesson of that debacle. It would be a travesty if the Justice Department listened to such an out of touch position and argued that the court should reject fair use in such scenarios.

It would be a complete embarrassment for an Obama administration that has argued that improving our education system is a key policy issue to turn its back on education by having its Justice Department argue against a public university library and students, and in favor of a blatantly self-interested copyright collection agency, funding some foreign publishers, trying to shake down students for extra money to learn. Just the fact that the US Copyright Office is supporting this and asking the Justice Department to make this move is a sign of how screwed up the Copyright Office is today. And it remains unclear why this is even an issue that concerns the Justice Department at all. Since when is access of students at a public university to educational materials an issue that should be of any interest to the Justice Department?

For what it's worth, we've heard that the people in the Justice Department who are considering its position are talking to various government agencies and officials over the next few days to determine what its final position should be. We would hope that the Justice Department, and the wider Obama administration (including the Copyright Office), take into account what happened last year when SOPA was put forth and the government sought to use copyright law to limit the public's rights. It would seem unwise to then take a position that might stir up significant interest, specifically when it involves something as ridiculous as supporting foreign publishers over public university students seeking reasonable fair use access to educational materials, as is clearly supported by the Copyright Act.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, doj, fair use, learning, libraries, obama administration, publishers, universities
Companies: georgia state university

DailyDirt: Educating Adults

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Elite schools aren't getting any cheaper, and college tuition seems to be rising faster than a lot of other goods (though the net price may not be). So what are aspiring university students to do? Here are just a few interesting links on the future of education.

• One proposal for college students to try to pay for rising tuition fees is for schools to take a cut of their students' future earnings in lieu of upfront tuition. Indentured servitude 2.0 might kill the classical liberal arts education, but oh well. [url]
• Baby boomers might be able to take college-level classes via iPads and chatrooms, but do they really want to? Mobile classes sound useful for students of any age, so why target just the baby boomers? (This exercise left to the reader.) [url]
• Sal Khan discusses the future of credentialing -- and how schools might be separated from the role of providing proof of proficiency. The future of microcredentials could offer a way for anyone to obtain proof of expertise in a narrowly-defined domain. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: college, credentialing, education, expertise, khan academy, microcredentials, schools, tuition, universities

Emory University's Dishonest Data Reminds Us That Ethics Don't Come From A 'Policy'

from the ethics-policy dept

I know that for many universities, where they end up in the various "rankings" lists can make a big difference in terms of the type of students they attract, the money they can bring in and the professors they can get. So it's almost surprising to me to find out that Emory University's admission that it effectively fudged the numbers it sent to US News & World Report (the pre-eminent listmaker of university rankings) was really the first of its kind. The article does note a few other questionable uses of data by some universities -- such as Baylor paying already admitted students to retake the SATs, hoping they'll score higher and boost the rankings -- but Emory went a bit further. It didn't quite make up the numbers, but chose to send in the data for all the students they admitted, rather than the students who enrolled. And, of course, many students with higher GPAs and SAT scores may have been admitted to Emory, but chose to go elsewhere.

Of course, what struck me as extra interesting about this, is that we always hear about universities disciplining students based on an "ethics" code or something like that. So I figured Emory probably had something like that as well... and it did. There's the Emory University Undergraduate Code of Conduct, which includes lines like:

Emory University expects that all students act honorably, demonstrating a keen sense of ethical conduct. The University expects that its students behave respectfully, providing particular consideration for other people and for property. As members of a community, Emory University expects that students act responsibly, being accountable for the safety and wellbeing of themselves and others. University students are expected to be trustworthy, demonstrating honest character upon which others may rely with confidence.

That same policy also forbids "intentional misrepresentation," including "providing false or misleading information to a University official" or "filing a false or misleading report."

I also found that the school has a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct for employees, which includes this tidbit:

Emory University has adopted an overarching Statement of Guiding Ethical Principles that applies to Emory employees and all other members of the Emory Community. Emory employees should strive to adhere to these principles in carrying out their job responsibilities, and in particular any responsibilities they have in connection with Federal Research/Contract Activities.

That pointed me to the Statement of Guiding Ethical Principles (pdf) which, among many other things has lines like the following:

Members of Emory are expected to strive for the highest degree of integrity.

All of this has me wondering about these kinds of "ethics" policies and "honor codes" and the like. So many universities have them, but I'm curious if they actually do any good at all. Most of them say things that are basically common sense, and I have trouble believing anyone actually considers "oh, but the ethics policy!" before violating them. So what is the purpose of such policies? It seems that ethics aren't the kind of thing that you write down in a policy, but that you demonstrate by how you act and what you do.

Filed Under: data, ethics, falsifying, rankings, universities
Companies: emory university

Canadian Universities Agree To Ridiculous Copyright Agreement That Says Emailing Hyperlinks Is Equal To Photocopying

from the poor-decision-making dept

In the past, we've written a few times about how Access Copyright, the Canadian collection society that gets revenue from universities for professors photocopying copyrighted works, and how it's been trying to increase rates by 1,300% by claiming that simply "posting a link" counted the same as making a copy. As we noted back in 2010, that's a crazy claim. Lots of universities decided to drop out of Access Copyright's system to avoid such crazy fees. However, not everyone decided to support this move. As a ton of you sent over, the universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have both signed agreements along those lines:

The agreement reached last month with the licensing agency includes provisions defining e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student and surveillance of academic staff email.

As the article notes, it seems incredibly premature for anyone to sign such an agreement, since the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in shortly about Access Copyright's mandate and limits, so there's simply no reason to rush into such a ridiculous deal. But, even worse is the message this kind of agreement sends to students. Accepting the idea that emailing hyperlinks is like making a photocopy is a ridiculous message that only serves to make more young people mock copyright as being a law that makes no sense at all.

Filed Under: copying, copyright, links, universities, university of toronto, university of western ontario
Companies: access copyright

Universities Buying Up .xxx Domains To Stop Porn Sites Showing, Once Again, That .xxx Is A Pure Money Grab

from the .xxx dept

For many years, we've pointed out that the introduction of new top level domains (TLDs) has always been more about the cash grab than anything reasonable. The whole point is to get a bunch of companies to pay up to buy theirdomain.tld, just to prevent others from squatting. And now that .xxx is around, the same thing is happening... even to the point that Universities and colleges are buying up .xxx domains to keep them away from porn sites. Of course, this is a total waste of money, but various schools feel they need to do it. In the end, it seems like these new TLDs come across more as a protection racket than anything else. You feel the need to buy them... or run the risk of someone else "doing something bad" with them.

Filed Under: .xxx, tlds, universities

Big Tech Companies Funding University Research Labs... Only If They Promise To Open Source The Results

from the kinda-backwards dept

The state of universities and intellectual property is pretty messy these days. Thanks to the screwed up Bayh-Dole law, many universities feel (wrongly) compelled to patent the research that they produce. This generally goes against their basic charters of sharing the knowledge that they create. It's also not very profitable. Only a small handful of universities have been able to make money off of patents. Most have lost a ton of money, setting up expensive tech transfer offices that don't return a dime.

However, in an interesting twist (pointed out by Glyn Moody), it appears that a variety of big tech companies, including Intel, HP and IBM, are now funding research centers on the condition that they open source anything that comes out of them.

Think about that for a second. These institutions of learning, who for decades have been built on education and sharing knowledge, want to lock up ideas. And the private companies, who are more commonly associated with trying to lock up proprietary information, are encouraging greater openness and sharing. That, alone, should show you just how screwed up our patent system is today.

Filed Under: bayh-dole, open source, patents, universities
Companies: hp, ibm, intel