Nice: NASA Opens Up Its Research Online For Free

from the book-learnin' dept

Every once in a while, we get some good news out of a government agency. Based on a 2013 directive from the White House, NASA had finally announced early this year that it would be following the NIH model and making its publicly funded research available for free online. With the only caveat being a restriction on research that relates to national security, NASA has made good on plans to publish the rest of this research on Pubspace, its new publicly-facing portal for sharing this research.

Care to learn more about 400-foot tsunamis on Mars? Now you can, after Nasa announced it is making all its publicly funded research available online for free. The space agency has set up a new public web portal called Pubspace, where the public can find Nasa-funded research articles on everything from the chances oflife on one of Saturn’s moons to the effects of space station living on the hair follicles of astronauts.

“Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research,” NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan said in a statement. “As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a foundation laid by others.”

It's a fine sentiment, as well as a wonderful analogous case to point to when discussing other knowledge that should, but currently isn't, freely available to the public. That NASA's research was long hidden entirely, or hidden behind a paywall, was especially egregious, however, given that this research is publicly funded. The idea of a government agency producing knowledge with taxpayer money and then hording it for secrecy or cash is, frankly, obscene. It's our research, after all. Freeing this up and letting the public build upon that knowledge can only be a good thing.

And, as even better news, this appears to be becoming something of a practice among the scientific community.

The move is part of a trend in the worldwide scientific community towards making knowledge more readily available. In May, EU member states agreed on an initiative to try to make all European scientific papers freely available by 2020. In the meantime, you can enjoy Nasa-funded insights into keeping fit in space, the ages of the lunar seas, and much more. Should keep you occupied for the weekend.

And perhaps it's worth boning up on that kind of thing now more than ever. After all, SETI recently made an announcement that you can read about here, but that I won't expand upon (spoiler: there was a light from a star system that's probably not aliens, but I want it to be aliens). You'll want all that NASA research goodness when Kro'thak Tentaclus arrives, so ya'll have something to talk about over coffee.

Filed Under: nasa, public domain, research
Companies: nasa

Who Should Get The Benefits When You Donate Your DNA For Research?

from the tales-from-the-Blue-Zone dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about researchers calling for up to five years' exclusivity for clinical trial data derived from volunteers. That kind of information, typically derived from trials of a new drug, tends to be highly specific. But there's another kind which can potentially contain millions of valuable data points. In fact, the genetic information contained within every strand of DNA can not only provide important insights into countless diseases and medical conditions, but is the closest thing that exists to a digital summary of the person it comes from.

Because of that unique ability to store key data about people, collections of DNA have become a hugely important scientific resource. And because DNA is so intimately bound up with a single, identifiable individual, they naturally feel a very strong connection to that digital string and how it is used. Both of those traits are evident in this fascinating story from the Guardian about Sardinia's "Blue Zone" with its unexpectedly long-lived inhabitants:

The story starts nearly 20 years ago when Gianni Pes, a Sardinian scientist at Sassari University, visited nearly all of Sardinia’s 377 municipalities to try to prove that certain areas had an unusually large number of people who lived extremely long lives. When they found a town that met their criteria, they marked it on their map with a blue marker. When they were done, the Sardinian Blue Zone was established.

Naturally, scientists are keen to understand whether there is some genetic characteristic shared by these exceptional individuals:

In all, four databases of DNA samples have been collected over the years, with some researchers refusing to collaborate with others.

That hints at the deepening bitterness that has engulfed this area of research, as two groups claim the right to investigate one of the region's DNA databases:

One of them was Shardna, created by a scientist called Mario Pirastu. Another entity, a partly publicly funded group called Parco Genetico, was established at the same time to facilitate the data collection and act as an intermediary between Shardna and the Blue Zone towns. Now the two groups both claim rights to the database.

It's a complicated tale, with many murky corners, and it's worth reading the whole Guardian feature to follow its twists and turns as various companies go bankrupt, and the precious database containing blood samples from 13,000 Blue Zone inhabitants keeps changing hands. But as the Guardian rightly points out, the real issue is not which outfit should get to own the database, but the following:

The conflict has raised the kind of thorny ethical questions that are likely to become more pervasive as scientists tap into the promise of massive DNA databases to learn more about disease. Should a private company be able to profit from the study of a population’s DNA, when the DNA was voluntarily donated?

Needless to say, lawyers are now involved in resolving the more mundane issues of ownership of the Blue Zone blood samples. But even if a court hands down its judgment for this particular case, the larger ethical issues will remain, and become ever-more pressing as the importance and value of DNA databases continues to rise.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: dna, privatization, public good, research

Volkswagen Created A 'Backdoor' To Basically All Its Cars... And Now Hackers Can Open All Of Them

from the backdoors-are-bad-m'kay? dept

And... for our latest example for why requiring companies to build backdoors into encryption or similar technologies is a bad idea comes from automaker Volkswagen. Researchers are now revealing that approximately 100 million VW vehicles can be easily opened via a simple wireless hack. The underlying issue: a static key used on basically all of the wireless locks in VWs.

The researchers found that with some “tedious reverse engineering” of one component inside a Volkswagen’s internal network, they were able to extract a single cryptographic key value shared among millions of Volkswagen vehicles. By then using their radio hardware to intercept another value that’s unique to the target vehicle and included in the signal sent every time a driver presses the key fob’s buttons, they can combine the two supposedly secret numbers to clone the key fob and access to the car. “You only need to eavesdrop once,” says Birmingham researcher David Oswald. “From that point on you can make a clone of the original remote control that locks and unlocks a vehicle as many times as you want.”

In other words, VW created a backdoor, and assumed that it would remain hidden. But it did not.

This is exactly the kind of point that we've been making about the problems of requiring any kind of backdoor and not enabling strong encryption. Using a single encryption key across every device is simply bad security. Forcing any kind of backdoor into any security system creates just these kinds of vulnerabilities -- and eventually someone's going to figure out how they work.

On a related note, the article points out that the researchers who found this vulnerability are the same ones who also found another vulnerability a few years ago that allowed them to start the ignition of a bunch of VW vehicles. And VW's response... was to sue them and try to keep the vulnerability secret for nearly two years. Perhaps, rather than trying to sue these researchers, they should have thrown a bunch of money at them to continue their work, alert VW and help VW make their cars safer and better protected.

Filed Under: backdoors, cars, encryption, hackers, research
Companies: volkswagen

EFF Lawsuit Challenges DMCA's Digital Locks Provision As First Amendment Violation

from the well,-that's-interesting dept

Computer security professor Matthew Green and famed hardware hacker Bunnie Huang have teamed up with the EFF to sue the US government, challenging the constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA, also known as the "anti-circumvention" clause. As we've discussed for many years, 1201 makes it against the law to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that is designed to "circumvent" DRM or other "technological protection measures." There are all sorts of problems with this part of the law, including the fact that it doesn't matter why you have that tool or why you're circumventing the DRM. For example, it would still be considered infringement if you cracked DRM on a public domain work. That's... insane.

The only "safety valve" on this is the ridiculous triennial review process, whereby people can beg and plead with the Librarian of Congress to "exempt" certain scenarios from being covered by 1201. The process is something of a joke, and even if you get an exemption one time, it automatically expires after three years, and the Library of Congress might not renew it.

The lawsuit, filed by EFF and some excellent lawyers from Wilson Sonsini, points out that the Supreme Court has long stated that fair use is the "safety valve" that stops copyright law from violating the First Amendment in regulating speech. But fair use isn't an allowable defense under 1201, leading to a question of whether or not 1201 itself violates the First Amendment:

Enacted in 1998, these provisions broadly restrict the public’s ability to access, speak about, and use copyrighted materials, without the traditional safeguards—such as the fair use doctrine—that are necessary to protect free speech and allow copyright law to coexist with the First Amendment. The threat of enforcement of these provisions chills protected and noninfringing speech that relies on copyrighted works, including independent technical research into computer security systems and the discussion of that research, and accessing copyrighted works in order to shift the content to a different format, space, or time. The triennial rulemaking process by which the public may seek exemptions pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(C) does not alleviate these problems. To the contrary, the rulemaking is itself an unconstitutional speech-licensing regime.

The complaint highlights how both Green and Huang have been scared away from working on various projects that have nothing to do with copyright-covered content, but both of which involve circumventing technological protection measures. In Green's case, it's about his security research, finding computer security problems in various devices. For Huang it's his work on a NeTVCR, an advancement on the NeTV device he created in the past. For it to work, however, he needs to get around HDCP and that, of course, would violate 1201. This presents a problem:

To the extent that the purpose of Section 1201 is “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” see U.S. Const. Art I, Sec. 8, cl. 8, its restrictions are not narrowly tailored to this purpose. Rather, they sweep up a vast amount of protected speech. This includes the speech that Green, Huang, Alphamax, and users of NeTVCR would undertake, but for the fear or criminal and other penalties. It also includes the many forms of speech that have been the subjects of exemption requests, and many additional forms of speech that have not yet been the subject of an exemption request. The means chosen in Section 1201 specifically targets the communicative impact of uses of copyrighted works and speech about the circumvention of TPMs that restrict such works.

Separately, as noted in the quote above, the case argues that the triennial review process itself violates the First Amendment.

The rulemaking contemplated by Section 1201(a)(1) is a licensing regime that lacks the safeguards the First Amendment requires. The combined ban and exemption process grants excessive power to a government official to make discretionary case-by-case decisions absent sufficient controlling standards.

Section 1201 does not provide for timely review of requests for permission to speak. Applicants must wait up to three years for an opportunity to participate in the triennial rulemaking, and the Rulemaking Defendants have no deadlines governing when they must issue a rule granting or denying exemption requests.

As Huang notes in his blog post about the case, this is a really big issue. It's both about free speech and what it means to "own" something.

Before Section 1201, the ownership of ideas was tempered by constitutional protections. Under this law, we had the right to tinker with gadgets that we bought, we had the right to record TV shows on our VCRs, and we had the right to remix songs. Section 1201 built an extra barrier around copyrightable works, restricting our prior ability to explore and create. In order to repair a gadget, we may have to decrypt its firmware; in order to remix a video, we may have to strip HDCP. Whereas we once readily expressed feelings and new ideas through remixes and hardware modifications, now we must first pause and ask: does this violate Section 1201? Especially now that cryptography pervades every aspect of modern life, every creative spark is likewise dampened by the chill of Section 1201.

The act of creation is no longer spontaneous.

Our recent generation of Makers, hackers, and entrepreneurs have developed under the shadow of Section 1201. Like the parable of the frog in the well, their creativity has been confined to a small patch, not realizing how big and blue the sky could be if they could step outside that well. Nascent 1201-free ecosystems outside the US are leading indicators of how far behind the next generation of Americans will be if we keep with the status quo.

Our children deserve better.

The argument here is compelling. 1201 has all sorts of problems, but no one has tested this First Amendment argument before. Unfortunately, our courts have been incredibly (and unfortunately) reluctant to seriously consider constitutional challenges to copyright law. The cases that have made it up through the court system have ended unfortunately badly -- cases like the Eldred case challenging copyright term extension, for example. I hope that this one turns out differently, and it may become a case to watch. Again, the arguments are quite compelling to me, but I'm unfortunately skeptical that the judicial system will agree. I hope I'm wrong.

Filed Under: 1201, anti-circumvention, bunnie huang, dmca, dmca 1201, fair use, first amendment, free speech, hacking, matthew green, research, security research, triennial review
Companies: eff

Just As Open Competitor To Elsevier's SSRN Launches, SSRN Accused Of Copyright Crackdown

from the the-inevitable dept

A couple of months ago, we wrote about how publishing giant Elsevier had purchased the open access pre-publisher SSRN. SSRN is basically the place where lots of research that we regularly report on is published. Legal and economics academics quite frequently post their journal articles there. Of course, Elsevier has a well-known reputation for being extreme copyright maximalists in dangerous ways. Having Elsevier take over SSRN concerned a lot of academics, and even led to calls for alternatives, including many asking the famed arXiv to open a social science research operation as well.

Indeed, it appears that arXiv was paying attention, because just about a week ago, SocArXiv was announced, and it already has a temporary home hosted by Open Science Framework.

And perhaps this came just in time, because just as that happened, Stephen Henderson, a law professor, noted that SSRN took down his paper saying that they didn't think he retained the copyright to it.

When I posted a final PDF of an article for which not only do my co-author and I retain the copyright, but for which the contract also includes _explicit_ permission to post on SSRN, I received the typical happy “SSRN Revision Email” saying all was well. Only when I went to take a look, I found there was no longer any PDF to download at all—merely the abstract. So, download counts are gone, and no article. Not the former working version nor the final version. And then in the revision comments, I found this:

It appears that you do not retain copyright to the paper, and the PDF has been removed from public view. Please provide us with the copyright holder's written permission to post. Alternatively, you may replace this version with a working paper or preprint version, if you so desire. Questions and/or written permissions may be emailed to support@ssrn.com, or call 1-877-SSRNHELP (877-777-6435 toll free) or 1-585-442-8170 outside the US.

So, not only have they completely changed their model, but—at least to me—they gave no effective notice, and they pull papers without asking. Nobody bothered to _ask_ whether I had permission; they simply took down every version of the article and said nothing. Alas. And when I called customer support and someone called back, I pointed out that some profs have hundreds of articles posted for which SSRN doesn’t hold the copyright agreements. “Are you going to take all those down too?,” I asked. The answer, in essence, “Those were posted in error.” Unbelievable.

As that story started to make the rounds, SSRN insisted that it was just a technical glitch, in that it had sent the wrong email, but others aren't buying it. And now, the Authors Alliance has come out with a notice telling SSRN authors that it may be time to try something new (such as SocArXiv) because Elsevier cannot be trusted. The Alliance notes that after Elsevier purchased SSRN, it reached out to Elsevier to try to get the company to commit to some basic principles of openness, and Elsevier refused:

Since we first heard of mega-publisher Elsevier’s acquisition of SSRN, the popular social sciences pre-print and working paper repository, we have expressed concern. Elsevier is not known to be an avid supporter of the open access publishing practices favored by many of our members, and has historically taken a restrictive stance toward author control and ownership of scholarship.

In response, we reached out to Elsevier and to SSRN with a set of principles the service could adopt that would reassure authors that SSRN could continue to be a go-to resource for those looking to refine and share their work. We have since heard back from SSRN: they would not commit to adopting even one of our principles. They offered more general reassurances that their policies would continue as before. We were not satisfied, but we decided to wait and see whether our fears would be borne out.

The article notes more examples of SSRN pulling down research, even when the authors do retain the copyright, combined with a misunderstanding of how Creative Commons licenses work. It seems fairly clear that this was not just the case of one email improperly sent. And thus, for those who rely on SSRN, it's probably time to start looking for alternative ways of posting documents.

SSRN authors: you have not committed to SSRN. You can remove your papers from their service, and you can opt instead to make your work available in venues that show real commitment to the sharing, vetting, and refinement of academic work.

The Authors Alliance also points out that researchers don't need to just post their research in one place, and can often host it themselves as well. But, it appears that SSRN under Elsevier is quickly losing trust. Considering that it was basically the go to place for all legal and economics research pre-publishing, that's quite a quick turn around, thanks entirely to Elsevier.

Filed Under: academic research, copyright, open access, pre publisher, research, scoarxiv
Companies: arxiv, elsevier, socarxiv, ssrn

ACLU Files Challenge To CFAA Over Blocking Research Into Discrimination Online

from the fix-the-cfaa dept

There's been a lot of talk lately about the possibility of discrimination being built into the algorithms that determine our lives. In the past year, multiple publications have discussed what happens when algorithms are racist in a time when algorithms decide more and more of our lives. Just recently, we talked about judges using proprietary algorithms in sentencing, and how those algorithms themselves may judge people based on things like skin color. And just a few days ago, there was a fascinating NY Times article about inherent bias in artificial intelligence systems. I even went to a conference recently, where there was a whole discussion on the question of what do you do "if your algorithm is racist." It's not an easy question to answer, honestly, but one thing that we should not be doing is holding back research into these systems.

And yet... that's exactly what's happening. And the culprit, once again, is the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA), which we've written about for years. The law, which is woefully out of date, and was passed (literally) by a Congress that was freaked out over the movie WarGames, is supposed to target evil "computer hackers." But it's written so broadly, including terms like "unauthorized access" or "exceeding authorized access," that it's been used against things like violating a terms of service (that you didn't read or even agree to) or against downloading too many files. And that's scaring the hell out of researchers.

Given that, the ACLU has now filed a lawsuit on behalf a group of academic researchers, computer scientists and journalists who want to investigate these issues, but are held back by the CFAA.

Our plaintiffs want to investigate whether websites are discriminating, but they often can’t. Courts and prosecutors have interpreted a provision of the CFAA—one that prohibits individuals from “exceed[ing] authorized access” to a computer—to criminalize violations of websites’ “terms of service.” Terms of service are the rules that govern the relationship between a website and its user and often include, for example, prohibitions on providing false information, creating multiple accounts, or using automated methods of recording publicly available data (sometimes called “scraping”).

The problem is that those are the very methods that are necessary to test for discrimination on the internet, and the academics and journalists who want to use those methods for socially valuable research should not have to risk prosecution for using them. The CFAA violates the First Amendment because it limits everyone, including academics and journalists, from gathering the publicly available information necessary to understand and speak about online discrimination.

In terms of the specific challenge, the ACLU is arguing that it violates both the First Amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The crux of the First Amendment argument in the filing:

The Challenged Provision impermissibly burdens speech about business practices and other activity on the internet because websites can determine what speech and expressive activity to prohibit, and these prohibitions become criminal violations of the Challenged Provision. In other words, a website can explicitly target speech or expressive activities. For example, if a website’s terms of service provide that access by certain types of speakers (such as researchers) is unauthorized, or that engaging in certain speech (false or misleading speech, for example, or subsequent disparaging speech about the website) renders access unauthorized, then violations of those private terms of service become crimes through the phrase “exceeds authorized access” in the Challenged Provision. Such speech or expressive activity thus becomes prohibited under pain of criminal sanctions simply because it occurred on the internet.

Because the Challenged Provision incorporates websites’ terms of service into the federal criminal code, its applications are virtually infinite; any speech or expressive activity that the private operator of a website has prohibited as a condition of access to its website becomes a criminal violation, even where that prohibition covers speech subsequent to the visit and in a different forum. In a good number of cases, a website’s ToS will prohibit speech that cannot constitutionally be prohibited. Accordingly, although the Challenged Provision may have legitimate applications, its unconstitutional applications are substantial in relation to its legitimate scope.

There's some more as well, including the idea that setting up fake profiles to test a site for discrimination may be considered a terms of service violation and one that violates the free speech of the researchers.

As for the Fifth Amendment:

The Challenged Provision fails to notify ordinary people of what conduct is criminal because the phrase “exceeds authorized access” does not provide sufficient notice that an individual must comply with a website’s written terms of service at all times. The plain meaning of the phrase “exceeds authorized access” does not clearly cover instances where a website places no barriers, such as technological or physical barriers, to access by individuals.

While I've been quite vocal for years about the problems of the CFAA and how it chills a variety of activities, including ones similar to those described here, and while I have enormous respect for the ACLU, I do wonder how successful this case will be. Courts are not always happy to take on cases that can be seen as more "speculative" than over a clear issue (i.e., after someone's been charged with violating the CFAA for this kind of activity). At the same time, courts also like to avoid dealing with Constitutional questions, if they can avoid it -- and so far, multiple courts have rejected attempts to claim that mere terms of service violation violates the CFAA. So they can get out of handling the Constitutional question by just saying "well, that particular use is not a CFAA violation."

So while I think this is a really important issue, and I'd love to see a constitutional challenge to these aspects of the CFAA succeed, I'm at least somewhat skeptical of the chances of this particular case. Hopefully, I'm proven wrong.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th amendment, academics, algorithms, cfaa, discrimination, journalism, research, terms of service
Companies: aclu

Shameful: House Panel Votes Down Plan To Make Public Domain Congressional Research Public

from the a-total-failure dept

For many, many years, we've complained about the fact that research reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) are kept secret. CRS is basically a really good, non-partisan research organization that tends to do very useful and credible research, when tasked to do so by members of Congress. The results, as works created by the federal government, are in the public domain. But the public never gets access to most of them. The reports are available to members of Congress, of course, but then it's up to the members who have access to them to actually release them to the public... or not. And most don't. Back in 2009, Wikileaks made news by releasing almost 7,000 CRS reports that had previously been secret. Since at least 2011, we've been writing about attempts to release these reports publicly, and nothing has happened.

In fact, Congress seems quite fearful of the public getting its hands on timely, credible, non-partisan and useful research paid for by taxpayers. Because it undermines the partisan fighting and tribalism around certain policy platforms that are built on myths, rather than evidence. For years, Congress has refused to adequately fund the CRS, and has tried to turn the useful researchers within CRS into free lackeys, rather than having them work on useful research.

In 2012, an effort was made to make CRS research available to the public and it went nowhere. And it looks like the same thing has just happened again. The House Appropriations Committee has voted down the bill by a large margin:

At a time when highly informed voters might seem like a good thing, the Appropriations Committee voted down, 18-32, an amendment from Reps. Mike Quigely (D-Ill.) and Scott Rigell (R-Va.) that would have made it easier for the public to access Congressional Research Service reports.

For what it's worth, CRS itself has historically opposed this, out of fear that it will put more pressure on its research team, and perhaps even lead them to being more fearful of writing something that is totally accurate, but politically unwelcome. And, some in Congress argue that such fears might bubble up to Congress as well:

But the chairman of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), argued that members needed to be "really, really careful with this." He noted that CRS was an arm of Congress, and he didn't want members to be afraid to ask CRS to prepare reports on controversial issues for fear that their requests would become public.

But, that's meaningless in the context of this bill, which wouldn't apply to the smaller reports done in direct response to questions from Congressional members. It would only apply to the larger reports that CRS creates for every member of Congress.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz similarly made completely bogus claims about this bill, saying that it would slow down the research that CRS does:

"I have serious concerns about changing the role that the Congressional Research Service plays," Wasserman Schulz said, arguing that it would not help members to have CRS go through a "long and arduous approval process."

This is bullshit for a bunch of reasons starting with the fact that the work is paid for by taxpayers and is in the public domain. Wasserman Schulz is showing pretty blatant contempt for the public with this claim. But, also, her claims are not true. Since any CRS document already has the chance of being released to the public, CRS already goes through a careful review process. Dan Schuman from Demand Progress has the details:

In fact, CRS already puts reports through an arduous, multi-stage review process because they know the reports will become publicly available. Thus, equal public access would not change the process at all. She also argued that releasing the reports would change the role of CRS in providing advice to members of Congress at the discretion of the Member. In fact, the general distribution reports that are the focus of the bill have nothing to do with confidential advice to Members.

So, again, it makes you wonder, why is Congress so intent on hiding this taxpayer funded research -- which has a history of being credible, factual and useful -- from the public? Could it be that an informed public is considered a bad thing to many members of Congress?

Filed Under: appropriations committee, congress, congressional research service, copyright, debbie wasserman schultz, public domain, research, tom graves

Disappointing: Elsevier Buys Open Access Academic Pre-Publisher SSRN

from the this-is-bad-news dept

The vast, vast majority of time when we point to new academic research, we end up linking to the research hosted on SSRN, which stands for the Social Science Research Network. SSRN has been around for a long, long time, and it's basically the go-to place to post research in the legal and economics worlds -- the two research areas we most frequently write about. At this moment, I have about 10 SSRN tabs open on interesting papers that I hope to write about at some point. Technically SSRN is what's known as a "preprint server," where academics can share papers before peer review is completed and the final papers end up in a locked up, paywalled journal. The kind of paywall run by a giant company like Elsevier.

So it's been quite distressing to many this morning to find out that Elsevier has now purchased SSRN. Everyone involved, of course, insists that "nothing will change" and that Elsevier will leave SSRN working as before, but perhaps with some more resources behind it (and, sure, SSRN could use some updates and upgrades). But Elsevier has such a long history of incredibly bad behavior that it's right to be concerned. Elsevier is not just a copyright maximalist (just last week at a hearing I attended involving the Copyright Office, Elsevier advocated for much more powerful takedown powers in copyright). It's not just suing those who make it easier to access academic info. It's not just charging insane amounts for journals. It also has a history of creating fake peer reviewed journals to help pharmaceutical companies make their drugs look better.

And it also has a history of lobbying heavily against open access, while similarly charging for open access research despite knowing it's not supposed to do this.

So, quite obviously, there is reason to be concerned that Elsevier may make some "changes" to SSRN that make it a lot less valuable for the sharing of academic research and papers in the near future.

Some are already suggesting it's time to build a new service (either as a nonprofit or a trust) to take over what SSRN was doing in the past. Or, alternatively, there's talk of getting other preprint servers, like the famed arXiv to start handling social sciences research as well. Another alternative might be just to see if the Internet Archive is willing to take on this kind of project itself.

Once again, though, it shows just how messed up copyright has become. Copyright is not the reason any of these papers gets written, and now copyright is seen as a weapon against the sharing of knowledge. When copyright was first put in place in the US, we were told it was to encourage the sharing of such educational resources. That may have been a lie at the time (it was designed as a tool for publishers), but if we're going to have a copyright system that claims to be about promoting science, at the very least, we should be able to live in a world where it really is easy to share academic research without fear that a copyright claim is going to destroy everything.

Filed Under: academic papers, copyright, open access, preprint server, research
Companies: elsevier, ssrn

If Open Sharing Of Data Is A Great Idea For Combatting A Dangerous Plant Disease, Why Not For All Human Diseases?

from the won't-somebody-think-of-the-wheat? dept

Wheat blast may not be uppermost in the minds of many Techdirt readers, but as the following explains, it's a serious plant disease that is spreading around the world:

Wheat blast is a fearsome fungal disease of wheat. It was first discovered in Paraná State of Brazil in 1985. It spread rapidly to other South American countries such as Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, where it infects up to 3 million hectares and causes serious crop losses. Wheat blast was also detected in Kentucky, USA, in 2011.

Wheat blast is caused by a fungus known as Magnaporthe oryzae although scientists are still debating its exact identity. There is a risk that wheat blast could expand beyond South America and threaten food security in wheat growing areas in Asia and Africa.

That comes from an interesting site called Open Wheat Blast. It's been set up by a group of scientists who want to help combat the threat of wheat blast. And as their name suggests, they hope to do that by sharing data as widely as possible:

To rapidly respond to this emergency, our team is making genetic data for the wheat blast pathogen available via this website and we are inviting others to do the same. Our goal is that the OpenWheatBlast website will provide a hub for information, collaboration and comment. Collectively, we can better exploit the genetic sequences and answer important questions about the nature of the pathogen and disease.

That's such a self-evidently sensible thing to do, the obvious question to ask is: why isn't this done routinely -- and for human diseases too? In fact, a couple of months ago, 33 global health bodies signed a "Statement on data sharing in public health emergencies," with particular emphasis on sharing data about the Zika virus:

The arguments for sharing data, and the consequences of not doing so, have been thrown into stark relief by the Ebola and Zika outbreaks.

In the context of a public health emergency of international concern, there is an imperative on all parties to make any information available that might have value in combatting the crisis.

We are committed to working in partnership to ensure that the global response to public health emergencies is informed by the best available research evidence and data

That declaration built on a "consensus statement" that came out of World Health Organization consultation on "Developing global norms for sharing data and results during public health emergencies" in September 2015. One of the summary points spells out the key issue holding back open sharing of key information:

WHO seeks a paradigm shift in the approach to information sharing in emergencies, from one limited by embargoes set for publication timelines, to open sharing using modern fit-for-purpose pre-publication platforms. Researchers, journals and funders will need to engage fully for this paradigm shift to occur.

As that makes clear, a big problem is the way that results are published, with researchers and publishers more interested in keeping their results under wraps for a while than spreading them widely and quickly. And there's another issue too:

Patents on natural genome sequences could be inhibitory for further research and product development. Research entities should exercise discretion in patenting and licensing genome-related inventions so as not to inhibit product development and to ensure appropriate benefit sharing.

It's a rather sad state of affairs when publishing concerns and patents are getting in the way of producing treatments and cures for serious human diseases that could improve the lives of millions of people. Protecting crops from wheat blast is, of course, welcome, but is it really the best we can do?

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Filed Under: data sharing, diseases, open access, patents, research, wheat blast

Rhode Island Attorney General Pushing For A State-Level CFAA That Will Turn Researchers, Whistleblowers Into Criminals

from the 'unauthorized-access'-isn't-always-a-bad-thing... dept

We recently wrote about the Rhode Island attorney general's "cybercrime" bill -- a legislative proposal that seeks to address cyberbullying, revenge porn, etc. with a bunch of broadly -- and poorly -- written clauses. Two negative comments written months apart could be viewed as "cyber-harassment" under the law, separating it from the sustained pattern of abuse that one normally considers "harassment."

In addition, the proposed law would criminalize "non-consensual communications." If the sender does not obtain the recipient's permission to send a message, it's a criminal act if the recipient finds the message to be distressing -- which could mean anything from emailing explicit threats to posting a negative comment on someone's Facebook page.

But that's not Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin's only bad idea. It appears he's behind another legislative proposal -- one that would amend the state's computer crime laws into something more closely resembling the catastrophic federal equivalent: the CFAA.

Here's the worst part of the suggested amendments:

Whoever intentionally and without authorization or in excess of one's authorization, directly or indirectly accesses a computer, computer program, computer system, or computer network with the intent to either view, obtain, copy, print or download any confidential information contained in or stored on such computer, computer program, computer system, or computer network, shall be guilty of a felony and shall be subject to the penalties set forth in §11-52-5.

This would make the following Google search illegal:

filetype:pdf site:*.gov "law enforcement use only"

Anything deemed "confidential information" -- if accessed by people not "authorized" to do so -- falls under the protection of this legislation, even if it can be accessed by any member of the public without actually "breaking into" a company/government/etc. server.

The definition of "confidential information" makes the legislation even more problematic.

"Confidential Information" means data that is protected from disclosure on a computer, computer program, computer system or computer network and that the computer, computer program, computer system or computer network does not transmit or disclose unless initiated by the owner of such computer, computer program, computer system or computer network.

Something accessible by a Google search is not "protected from disclosure" by any stretch of the imagination. But this phrase, "unless initiated by the owner of such computer…," makes it illegal to obtain documents not otherwise protected. Uploading a sensitive document to a public-facing website crawled by Google is stupid and the person doing the uploading should take any "unauthorized access" as a learning experience. But under the law, it could successfully be argued that the uploading of a document to a publicly-accessible website is not the same thing as "initiating transmission."

The proposal makes several exemptions for service providers, software manufacturers and (no kidding) advertisers, so that their trawling of confidential information in the course of their businesses won't be viewed as criminal acts. But what it doesn't do is carve out an exception for security researchers, who often access confidential information during the course of their work.

In this form, the legislation is dangerous. It will criminalize security research and punish citizens for the stupidity of others. On top of that, the law would pretty much turn every whistleblower into a criminal by treating the access of confidential information as a crime, no matter what the circumstances are. Running it through an editing process involving politicians surrounded by "cyberwar" hype is unlikely to improve it.

Filed Under: cfaa, computer crimes, peter kilmartin, research, rhode island