New Boycott In Support Of Open Access: Third Time Lucky?

from the idea-whose-time-has-come dept

Over three years ago, we wrote about a fast-growing boycott of the academic publisher Elsevier, organised in protest at that company's high prices, its "bundling" of journals into larger collections, and its support for SOPA. Even though over 15,000 people eventually pledged not to work with Elsevier, the company is still going strong, making huge profits from the work of academics, and putting paywalls between the public and knowledge. Perhaps we should have guessed it would end like that. As we noted then, this was not the first or biggest boycott in the history of open access. In 2000, 34,000 scientists from 180 nations signed up to the following:

we pledge that, beginning in September 2001, we will publish in, edit or review for, and personally subscribe to only those scholarly and scientific journals that have agreed to grant unrestricted free distribution rights to any and all original research reports that they have published, through PubMed Central and similar online public resources, within 6 months of their initial publication date.

The failure by many of them to follow through on that promise did have one positive effect: it led to the creation of what remains perhaps the most influential open access publisher, the Public Library of Science, which is still around today, and flourishing. Both of these unsuccessful attempts to use boycotts to push forward open access are mentioned in a post by Dr Danny Kingsley on the Unlocking Research blog, which reports on yet another attempt to use this approach:

A long running dispute between Dutch universities and Elsevier has taken an interesting turn. Yesterday Koen Becking, chairman of the Executive Board of Tilburg University who has been negotiating with scientific publishers about an open access policy on behalf of Dutch universities with his colleague Gerard Meijer, announced a plan to start boycotting Elsevier.

As a first step in boycotting the publisher, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has asked all scientists that are editor in chief of a journal published by Elsevier to give up their post. If this way of putting pressure on the publishers does not work, the next step would be to ask reviewers to stop working for Elsevier. After that, scientists could be asked to stop publishing in Elsevier journals.

And here's why Kingsley thinks this time the boycott might work:

Typically negotiations with publishers occur at an institutional level and with representatives from the university libraries. This makes sense as libraries have long standing relationships with publishers and understand the minutiae of the licencing processes . However the Dutch negotiations have been led by the Vice Chancellors of the universities. It is a country-wide negotiation at the highest level. And Vice Chancellors have the ability to request behaviour change of their research communities.

That exposes what went wrong with the previous boycotts: they were carried out by the researchers, who have very little clout individually or even collectively when it comes to putting pressure on huge companies like Elsevier. But the Vice Chancellors have real power, based on the ability to instruct their respective institutions how they should -- or shouldn't -- act, including, presumably, how they spend their money on journal subscriptions.

The Dutch seem to be serious about making open access the norm in their country. A recent amendment to the country's copyright act means that authors are now entitled by law to make the results of their research available under open access licenses. As a short notice on the University of Utrecht site explains:

This means that university staff no longer have to lay down the right to publish open access in agreements with publishers. After the amendment of the law they have and keep this right automatically. With the publisher they only have to reach an agreement on the length of 'a reasonable period of time'.

Even without the boycott, then, Elsevier will be obliged to agree to release research that is completely or partly paid for by the Dutch government as open access after that "reasonable period of time." All-in-all, now might be a good moment for the company to take a more accommodating approach to open access than it has in the past.

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

Filed Under: academic journals, boycott, journals, open access
Companies: elsevier

Indian Film Industry To Punish Pirates Paying Customers With 3-Month Film Release Boycott

from the baby,-bathwater dept

As we've noted countless times, diminishing the impact of piracy isn't exactly rocket science. Give consumers what they want at a reasonable price, and more often than not you'll be able to minimize piracy's impact on your business model. But as we've seen just as often, that logic is a bridge too far for many entertainment industry executives, who've relentlessly instituted all manner of more "creative" solutions to try and retain legacy power in shifting markets. Why give consumers what they want when you can insult, cajole, sue and otherwise harass your paying customers, then blame everything but your own rigid thinking?

The latest ingenious solution comes courtesy of India's Tamil Film Producer's Council (TFPC), which is considering a plan to stop releasing movies entirely in the misguided belief that this is going to somehow stop people from pirating. Apparently, the logic goes, if you stop releasing films for three months, the lack of things to pirate (ignoring a century of previous content, of course) will magically stop piracy forever! Ingenious!:

"Piracy will automatically stop when there's no content. When we stop film releases, say for three months, the movie pirates will go out of business. We are looking into this option because film producers have suffered heavily in the last 24 months," (said) Kalaipuli S Thanu, TFPC president."

One, there's just a blistering amount of hubris involved in believing that you can turn an entire culture's art creation on and off like some kind of spigot. Like they were scolding a kitten, you'll recall the RIAA often used to state that if people didn't stop pirating content, creators would just stop making music -- as if the business side of the equation could simply wipe all art creation from the face of the earth. That some still think they can unilaterally stop art creation as a "punishment" for piracy perfectly exemplifies the distorted thinking responsible for the global entertainment industry's ongoing struggles.

Two, the report notes that just a three-month ban on film production would impact the release of some 36 Indian films, which would then be harmed by the fact that they'd be shoveled in a more crowded release window. In addition to harming content creators, TFPC can't apparently understand that stopping the release of all films hurts its paying customers. Local filmmaker "Cheran" has a different suggested course of action, involving crazy concepts like modifying release windows and (gasp) lowering prices:

"If original DVD of a new film is available for Rs.50, why would anyone think of buying a pirated copy?" (asked Indian Filmmaker Cheran. "We all know the quality of pirated prints. I've sold nearly Rs.10 lakh (or around $16,800) DVDs of my film in the first two days," he said."I don't mind if one person buys and shows it to his entire family. As long as people don't watch pirated version of any film, I'm happy to release my films on DVD. Most households today have access to digital TV, so new films can be released via direct-to-home medium as well," he added."

Hopefully somebody at the TFPC hears Cheran's outlandish suggestions above the din of indignant entitlement.

Filed Under: boycott, films, india, piracy
Companies: tamil film producer's council, tfpc

Boycott Called Against Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association Titles In Protest Of New Copyright Law

from the defending-the-glue dept

Last week we reported on the Spanish newspaper publishers' association (AEDE) begging the Spanish government and EU to stop Google News shutting down as it realizes how much its members depend on Google for traffic to newspaper sites. To bring home just how stupid the new Spanish copyright law is, the online site Hipertextual.com is now calling for a boycott of all titles owned by AEDE (original in Spanish):

Are you too against the new copyright law and the AEDE tax on media and aggregators? The first step you can take right now is to begin a boycott of AEDE titles: don't visit them, don't link to them, don't give them traffic or relevance.

The Hipertextual.com article also recommends installing add-ons for the Chrome and Firefox browsers that automatically block all links to AEDE titles, and provides lists of international, national and regional alternatives.

Even if it is well supported, the boycott on its own probably wouldn't have much effect, but combined with the devastating loss of traffic that Google News closing will cause, it will certainly add to the pressure on the AEDE publishers. Just as importantly, it will also show that whatever the Spanish government may think, the country's new copyright law is not just about squeezing money from a rich US company, but also represents a serious threat to the basic glue that holds the Web together -- the hypertext link.

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

Filed Under: boycott, google news, publishers, spain
Companies: aede

GoDaddy Boycott Fizzles; Twice As Many Domains Transfer In As Out

from the not-sustainable dept

Yesterday, we noted that it appeared that the "GoDaddy boycott" concept may have been losing steam, thanks to the company's decision to move away from supporting the bill... combined with a new aggressive advertising campaign. Finally, on Thursday morning, the company went a step further: saying it hadn't just stopped supporting SOPA but now directly opposed SOPA. Even though the company notes that it saw "a spike in domain name transfers," it looks like the actual "boycott" day fizzled out. Looking at the results from DailyChanges shows that GoDaddy actually had a strongly positive day, netting 20,748 more domains at the end of the day than the beginning. On transfers alone, there were nearly double the number of transfers in as out (27,843 in to 14,492 out) as well as more new registrations than deleted domains (43,304 new registrations compared to 35,907 deletions). This isn't that surprising, really. There was a big burst last week, which is what resulted in GoDaddy changing its stance on the bills. In other words, it seemed like most people jumped to make the move immediately, rather than waiting a week. On top of that, GoDaddy's change in position very likely did ease the concerns of many. And, many made the quite reasonable argument that continuing the boycott after GoDaddy officially changed positions would be counterproductive, since it would discourage other companies from changing their position as well. Of course, a counter argument would be that the goal of the boycott was less about convincing others on the list to change positions as it was to make sure that no other companies decided to support SOPA or any similar future regulations.

Either way, it appears that for those who were hoping for a big boycott on Thursday, that didn't happen. I'm sure some SOPA supporters will use this as fodder to suggest the whole effort was a failure, but that's ridiculous. The whole thing still got a large company that was a huge supporter of these terrible bills to switch its position and recognize that it can't run roughshod over the wishes of its customers. It also helped draw more attention to the overall issue, and helped in getting other companies to back away from supporting the bill. It also got some attention among elected officials about how supporting this bill could get the internet activated. It may not be enough to kill the bills yet, but more politicians are aware of the issues. All in all, getting GoDaddy to change its position was a huge victory against SOPA and PIPA, but remains just one battle in a long and still ongoing war.

Update: There are a bunch of comments insisting that this can't be true, and I'm happy to see more data. NameCheap claims that it had 32,000 domains transfer in, and it's true that Daily Changes isn't a perfect proxy for domain transfers -- but it's a pretty good one. Some are suggesting that delays in processing will show more transfers over the next few days. We'll be watching. It's possible that there were a lot more transfers, but just because people want it to happen, doesn't mean it actually happened. Update 2: NameCheap says in the last week they've received around 80,000 transfers.

Filed Under: boycott, domains, pipa, protect ip, public, sopa
Companies: godaddy

Is A Naked Danica Patrick Working To Quell GoDaddy Boycott Efforts?

from the timing-is-everything dept

Well, today was the day originally scheduled as the GoDaddy boycott day, in which people who had registered domains with GoDaddy were going to transfer them out. With GoDaddy officially dropping support for SOPA, there have been some questions about whether or not that boycott will still happen in significant numbers. There have already been some high profile transfers, such as from the Imgur folks, and there are still plenty of people talking about going through with the boycott as planned.

However, GoDaddy seems to be focusing on what's worked for it in the past: advertising with scantily clad women (and Danica Patrick in particular). Apparently it's been putting full page ads in the NY Times (and other papers?) with Patrick covered strategically by a sign.

And... the strategy may have worked so far.

While tons of domains transferred out at the end of last week, this week has been a bit of a different story. On Monday, it looks like GoDaddy basically broke even, with 18,401 new registrations and 14,853 transfers in... vs only 8,862 transfers out and 24,120 domains deleted. That netted out to an increase for GoDaddy of 272 domains. Tuesday was even more positive for the company. Even though another 16,662 domains were transferred out and another 27,564 were deleted, there was a big bump in new registrations: 31,574 (perhaps driven by new ads?) and another 15,452 transferred in. Net change? 2,800 in the plus column for GoDaddy. Finally, that same trend continued for Wednesday: an impressive 33,251 new registrations and 17,549 transfers in. That goes against 15,524 transfers out and 30,634 deletions. Net: 4,642 more domains under GoDaddy control.

Left unanswered: is this a lull before a bunch of transfers today? Or has the whole boycott issue subsided?

Filed Under: advertising, boycott, danica patrick, domains, pipa, protect ip, public, sopa
Companies: godaddy

GoDaddy Desperately Reaching Out To Try To Win People Back

from the too-little,-too-late dept

Via Tim Lee, we learn that, in the wake of the capitulation by GoDaddy, some of those who transferred domains to other providers are now receiving calls from GoDaddy customer service folks trying to win them back. Chris Heald explains what happened to him:

I just got a call from #GoDaddy. The rep said he noticed that I'd transferred my 60+ domains away... and wanted to know if I'd tell them why. I got to tell them that it was because of their #SOPA support, and that I couldn't in good conscience give my money to a tech company that would support legislation like that. I told him I was aware that they had reversed their position, but that their explicit support of it in the first place had cost them my confidence in them, as it is at the best viciously ignorant, and at worst, malicious. The rep was quite sincere in his apology to me, asked if there was anything they could do to win me back. He had a "We support IP protections, and now realize that support of SOPA is too broad" song-and-dance routine that probably came in from a PR memo today. I told him "no thanks", and that was that. I'm impressed by the customer service hustle, but it shows that this little incident really spooked them.

It really makes me wonder if GoDaddy will ever be able to win back the confidence of many who joined this boycott. Perhaps not.

Filed Under: boycott, domains, pipa, protect ip, sopa, transfer
Companies: godaddy

Breaking: GoDaddy Drops SOPA Support

from the wow dept

As the public backlash continued to grow -- and GoDaddy's support of it seemed entirely tone deaf to what people were saying -- you knew something had to break eventually. GoDaddy has just announced that it no longer supports SOPA. From the press release they just sent, they say they'll only support future version of the bill if the internet community supports it too:

Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

"Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation -- but we can clearly do better," Warren Adelman, Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO, said. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. Jones has fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS filtering to ensure the integrity of the Internet, more significant consequences for frivolous claims, and specific provisions to protect free speech.

"As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy," said Adelman.

In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.

"Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.

I would imagine that, for many, this will be too late, but as SOPA support continues to crumble, it's going to make it very difficult for Congress to claim that this bill really has much support out in the real world.

Filed Under: boycott, pipa, protect ip, public, sopa
Companies: godaddy

MTV Supposedly Boycotting Warner Music Artists In Rock Band

from the nice-work,-Warner! dept

A bunch of folks have sent in an article from the latest issue of Wired Magazine about Warner Music's fight with the publishers of music video games, Rock Band and Guitar Hero. To be honest, the article doesn't cover much more ground than stories from last year, when Warner Music's Edgar Bronfman Jr. first demanded more money from the game publishers. But, it does include one juicy tidbit. After reposting Bronfman's silly quote demanding more money:

"In response, Rock Band publisher MTV Games is now boycotting Warner artists, according to a source close to the negotiations."

This is yet another example (in an increasingly long line) of how Warner Music's recent actions have done plenty to harm its artists. You may recall that a similarly ridiculous whine from Warner Music execs that YouTube wasn't paying enough money resulted in YouTube pulling all Warner Music videos from the site, pissing off many Warner Music artists. Other reports have noted that if musicians were blocked from getting their music in these video games, they might look to move to other labels as well.

And, of course, Warner Music's fight with the video game publishers is doubly stupid. Reports have shown that having your music in one of those games greatly increases sales of the music itself. So... the end result? Pissed off musicians who get less people hearing and interacting with and buying the music. It's amazing that Warner stays in business at all, with management foresight like that.

Filed Under: boycott, guitar hero, music, rock band, video games
Companies: warner music