Top Publishers Aim To Own The Entire Academic Research Publishing Stack; Here's How To Stop That Happening

from the protocols-not-platforms dept

Techdirt's coverage of open access -- the idea that the fruits of publicly-funded scholarship should be freely available to all -- shows that the results so far have been mixed. On the one hand, many journals have moved to an open access model. On the other, the overall subscription costs for academic institutions have not gone down, and neither have the excessive profit margins of academic publishers. Despite that success in fending off this attempt to re-invent the way academic work is disseminated, publishers want more. In particular, they want more money and more power. In an important new paper, a group of researchers warn that companies now aim to own the entire academic publishing stack:

Over the last decade, the four leading publishing houses have all acquired or developed a range of services aiming to develop vertical integration over the entire scientific process from literature search to data acquisition, analysis, writing, publishing and outreach. User profiles inform the corporations in real time on who is currently working on which problems and where. This information allows them to offer bespoke packaged workflow solutions to institutions. For any institution buying such a workflow package, the risk of vendor lock-in is very real: without any standards, it becomes technically and financially nearly impossible to substitute a chosen service provider with another one. In the best case, this non-substitutability will lead to a practically irreversible fragmentation of research objects and processes as long as a plurality of service providers would be maintained. In the worst case, it will lead to complete dependence of a single, dominant commercial provider.

Commenting on this paper, a post on the MeaseyLab blog calls this "academic capture":

For those of us who have lived through state capture, we felt powerless and could only watch as institutions were plundered. Right now, we are willing participants in the capture of our own academic freedom.

Academic capture: when the institutions' policies are significantly influenced by publishing companies for their profit.

Fortunately, there is a way to counter this growing threat, as the authors of the paper explain: adopt open standards.

To prevent commercial monopolization, to ensure cybersecurity, user/patient privacy, and future development, these standards need to be open, under the governance of the scholarly community. Open standards enable switching from one provider to another, allowing public institutions to develop tender or bidding processes, in which service providers can compete with each other with their services for the scientific workflow.

Techdirt readers will recognize this as exactly the idea that lies at the heart of Mike's influential essay "Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech". Activist and writer Cory Doctorow has also been pushing for the same thing -- what he calls "adversarial interoperability". It seems like an idea whose time has come, not just for academic publishing, but every aspect of today's digital world.

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Filed Under: academic capture, copyright, open access, protocols, publishing, research

California's 'Open Access' Fiber Broadband Plan Is Making Telecom Giants Like AT&T Nervous

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Back in 2009, the FCC funded a Harvard study that concluded (pdf) that open access broadband networks (letting multiple ISPs come in and compete over a central, core network) resulted in lower broadband prices and better service in numerous locations worldwide. Of course when the Obama FCC released its "National Broadband Plan" back in 2010, this realization (not to mention an honest accounting of the sector's limited competition) was nowhere to be found. Both parties ignored the data and instead doubled down on our existing national telecom policy plan: letting AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast do pretty much whatever they'd like. Something, of course, taken to ridiculous new heights during the Trump era.

Since then, "open access" has become somewhat of a dirty word in telecom policy, and even companies like Google Fiber -- which originally promised to adhere to the concept on its own network before quietly backpedaling -- are eager to pretend the idea doesn't exist. Why? Because having ISPs compete in layers over a centralized network may improve service, boost speeds, and reduce prices (see: this community-run network in Ammon, Idaho), but it would eat into the revenues of the regional monopolies bone-grafted to our intelligence gathering apparatus, and you simply can't have that.

Which is why it was surprising to see California recently pass a $6 billion broadband infrastructure bill that does something unique: it mandates the creation of a massive "middle mile" fiber network that will be open access, which should encourage increased competition. The original announcement breaks down the spending this way:

$3.25 billion to build, operate and maintain an open access, state-owned middle mile network – high-capacity fiber lines that carry large amounts of data at higher speeds over longer distances between local networks.

$2 billion to set up last-mile broadband connections that will connect homes and businesses with local networks. The legislation expedites project deployment and enables Tribes and local governments to access this funding.

$750 million for a loan loss reserve fund to bolster the ability of local governments and nonprofits to secure financing for broadband infrastructure.

That's a lot of money that could be potentially going somewhere other than entrenched telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast. That means increased competition, something AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and others fight tooth and nail (rather successfully) to avoid. You can tell AT&T in particular is nervous about it, because the new bill's passage forced the company to recently launch this silly astroturf website claiming to represent "Californians for broadband equity." The website is chock full of stock photos of children, and lots of empty lip service to "fixing the digital divide":

Only if you look at some of the materials posted in the page's resources section do you see the site is backed by AT&T and Frontier Communications.

To be very clear, dominant regional monopolies in California like AT&T and Frontier love the decades-old US telecom policy approach to broadband. Namely, throw billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies at incumbent monopolies, which then fail to deliver what was promised, refuse to give back the money, and then pretend they're not part of the problem.

There's an entire universe of AT&T-linked orgs and individuals that suffer an absolute embolism anytime taxpayer resources are used to build local community broadband efforts. But those same groups and individuals are nowhere to be found every time AT&T gets a $42 billion tax cut for doing absolutely nothing. Or gets billions in subsidies and regulatory favors in exchange for fiber networks that are always, mysteriously, half deployed.

In short, AT&T and Frontier want the focus to remain exclusively on giving them yet more money to shore up access in areas they've neglected for years. What they don't want is any money going toward competition within their existing footprint. Despite the fact that high prices due to limited competition are one of the highest barriers to access for many communities (something particularly pronounced during COVID). US broadband is expensive and mediocre thanks to regional monopolization and the state/federal corruption that protects it. There's a lot of time and money spent trying to ignore or deny that fact.

If you didn't understand this context you might stumble into this new AT&T website thinking it's a well intentioned group just super interested in helping poor toddlers get broadband. But it's really just incumbent monopolies trying to ensure more of California's new broadband budget goes to them, and less goes to pesky competitors that might force them to (gasp) compete on price. Should AT&T and Comcast not get their adequate slice of California's planned broadband budget, you can expect a lot more lobbying and policy theatrics of this sort in the fall.

Filed Under: broadband, california, competition, fcc, fiber, open access
Companies: at&t, frontier

Free Access To Academic Papers For Everyone In India: Government Proposes 'One Nation, One Subscription' Approach As Part Of Major Shift To Openness

from the open-everything dept

Techdirt has been following the important copyright case in India that is about how people in that country can access academic journals. Currently, many turn to "shadow libraries" like Sci-Hub and Libgen, because they cannot afford the often hefty frees that academic publishers charge to access papers. If a new "Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy" (pdf), just released as a draft by the Government of India, comes to fruition, people may not need to:

The Government of India will negotiate with journal publishers for a "one nation, one subscription" policy whereby, in return for one centrally-negotiated payment, all individuals in India will have access to journal articles. This will replace individual institutional journal subscriptions.

That's just one of the bold ideas contained in the 63-page document. Here's another: open access to all research funded by the Indian taxpayers.

Full text of final accepted author versions of manuscripts (postprints and optionally preprints) along with supplementary materials, which are the result of public funding or performed in publicly funded institutions, or were performed using infrastructure built with the support of public funds will be deposited, immediately upon acceptance, to an institutional repository or central repository.

Similarly, all data generated from publicly funded research will be released as open data, with a few exceptions:

All data used in and generated from public-funded research will be available to everyone (larger scientific community and public) under FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) terms. Wherever applicable, exceptions will be made on grounds of privacy, national security and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Even in such situations, suitably anonymised and/or redacted data will be made available. In all cases, where the data cannot be released to the general public, there will be a mechanism to release it to bonafide/authorised researchers.

All publicly funded scientific resources will be made shareable and accessible nationally through digital platforms, including laboratories, supercomputing and AI facilities. Publicly funded open educational resources will be made available under a "minimally restrictive" open content license. Libraries at publicly funded institutions will be accessible to everyone, subject only to "reasonable security protocols".

Another idea is the creation of a dedicated portal (remember those?), the Indian Science and Technology Archive of Research, which will provide access to all publicly funded research, including manuscripts, research data, supplementary information, research protocols, review articles, conference proceedings, monographs, book chapters, etc. There will also be a national science, technology and innovation "observatory", which will establish data repositories and a computational grid, among other things.

It's an incredibly ambitious program, with an ambitious goal: "To achieve technological self-reliance and position India among the top three scientific superpowers in the decade to come." The other two superpowers being the US and China, presumably. Whether that program is implemented, wholly or even just in part, is another matter, and will depend on the lobbying that will now inevitably take place, and the usual budgetary constraints. But it is certainly impressive in the completeness of its vision, and in its commitment to openness and sharing in all its forms.

Comments on the proposals can be sent to india-stip@gov.in until Monday, 25 January, 2021.

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Filed Under: academic research, access to knowledge, copyright, india, learning, open access

Seven Years Ago, CERN Gave Open Access A Huge Boost; Now It's Doing The Same For Open Data

from the tim-berners-lee-would-be-proud dept

Techdirt readers will be very familiar with CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research (the acronym comes from the French version: Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire). It's best known for two things: being the birthplace of the World Wide Web, and home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. Over 12,000 scientists of 110 nationalities, from institutes in more than 70 countries, work at CERN. Between them, they produce a huge quantity of scientific papers. That made CERN's decision in 2013 to release nearly all of its published articles as open access one of the most important milestones in the field of academic publishing. Since 2014, CERN has published 40,000 open access articles. But as Techdirt has noted, open access is just the start. As well as the final reports on academic work, what is also needed is the underlying data. Making that data freely available allows others to check the analysis, and to use it for further investigation -- for example, by combining it with data from elsewhere. The push for open data has been underway for a while, and has just received a big boost from CERN:

The four main LHC collaborations (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb) have unanimously endorsed a new open data policy for scientific experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which was presented to the CERN Council today. The policy commits to publicly releasing so-called level 3 scientific data, the type required to make scientific studies, collected by the LHC experiments. Data will start to be released approximately five years after collection, and the aim is for the full dataset to be publicly available by the close of the experiment concerned. The policy addresses the growing movement of open science, which aims to make scientific research more reproducible, accessible, and collaborative.

The level 3 data released can contribute to scientific research in particle physics, as well as research in the field of scientific computing, for example to improve reconstruction or analysis methods based on machine learning techniques, an approach that requires rich data sets for training and validation.

CERN's open data portal already contains 2 petabytes of data -- a figure that is likely to rise rapidly, since LHR experiments typically generate massive quantities of data. However, the raw data will not in general be released. The open data policy document (pdf) explains why:

This is due to the complexity of the data, metadata and software, the required knowledge of the detector itself and the methods of reconstruction, the extensive computing resources necessary and the access issues for the enormous volume of data stored in archival media. It should be noted that, for these reasons, general direct access to the raw data is not even available to individuals within the collaboration, and that instead the production of reconstructed data (i.e. Level-3 data) is performed centrally. Access to representative subsets of raw data -- useful for example for studies in the machine learning domain and beyond -- can be released together with Level-3 formats, at the discretion of each experiment.

There will also be Level 2 data, "provided in simplified, portable and self-contained formats suitable for educational and public understanding purposes". CERN says that it may create "lightweight" environments to allow such data to be explored more easily. Virtual computing environments for the Level 3 data will be made available to aid the re-use of this primary research material. Although the data is being released using a Creative Commons CC0 waiver, acknowledgements of the data's origin are required, and any new publications that result must be clearly distinguishable from those written by the original CERN teams.

As with the move to open access in 2013, the new open data policy is unlikely to have much of a direct impact for people outside the high energy physics community. But it does represent an extremely strong and important signal that CERN believes open data must and will become the norm.

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Filed Under: experiments, knowledge, open access, open data, science, sharing
Companies: cern

Benton Study Again Shows How 'Open Access' Broadband Networks Can Drive Competition, Improve Service

from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept

In 2009, the FCC funded a Harvard study that concluded (pdf) that open access broadband networks (letting multiple ISPs come in and compete over a central, core network) resulted in lower broadband prices and better service in numerous locations worldwide. Of course when the FCC released its "National Broadband Plan" back in 2010, this realization (not to mention an honest accounting of the sector's limited competition) was nowhere to be found. Both parties ignored the data and instead doubled down on our existing national telecom policy plan: letting AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast do pretty much whatever they'd like.

Since then, "open access" has become somewhat of a dirty word in telecom, and even companies like Google Fiber -- which originally promised to adhere to the concept on its own network before quietly backpedaling -- are eager to pretend the idea doesn't exist. Why? Because having ISPs compete in layers over a centralized network may improve service, boost speeds, and reduce prices, but it would eat into monopoly revenues and you simply can't have that.

Of course that doesn't mean the model doesn't work. The original 2009 Harvard study looked at numerous global instances where it worked really well to disrupt the status quo. This week, the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society released a new report (pdf) finding that, once again, open access networks could be a productive path out of the current monopolistic logjam that is the broken U.S. broadband market. Specifically when they're used for so-called "middle mile" broadband networks, with the support of local communities:

"Experience has shown that state and local governments can experiment with and facilitate pragmatic solutions, such as the implementation of open-access, middle-mile networks that help ensure that everyone can use High-Performance Broadband—from building networks that offer affordable broadband service to ensuring that people, such as the newly unemployed, have the resources and skills to use broadband. Perhaps most importantly, state and local governments are nearby, not thousands of miles away, and they hear the voices of local communities."

Open access also works well in last-mile (closer to your home) solutions. The town of Ammon, Idaho showcases precisely why telecom giants despise this model: it brings additional competition to bear on captive markets. The town built a locally owned 30 mile fiber network, then invited ISPs to come in and compete under an open access model. Locals currently have four ISPs to chose from (with more presumably coming), and users can switch ISPs in a matter of seconds.

Open access broadband works. Data continually shows it, and such a model would come in handy during a, say, national health crisis that's busy showcasing how broadband is an essential lifeline to work, education, and survival. Starting small and building outward, government could work with localities and smaller, hungrier telecoms to expand this idea. But federal policymakers don't embrace such a model because, again, monopolies don't like competition. And when you're so politically powerful that you literally write federal and state telecom law with a relentless eye on hamstringing competition, you tend to get what you want.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, open access

Good News: Academics Can Make Their Articles Published In Top Journal Nature Freely Available As Open Access. Bad News: They Must Pay $11,000 For Each One

from the free-but-not-free dept

Two years ago, Techdirt wrote about Plan S, an initiative from top research funders that requires all work they support to be published as open access. It's one of the most important moves to get publicly-funded work made freely available, and as such has been widely welcomed. Except by publishers, of course, who have enjoyed profit margins of 35-40% under the current system, which sees libraries and others pay for subscriptions in order to read public research. But Plan S is too big to ignore, not least after the powerful Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined the coalition behind it. So publishers have instead come up with ways to subvert the whole idea of making knowledge freely available in order to maintain profits. The latest and perhaps most blatant example of this has come from Springer Nature, the publisher of the journal Nature, widely regarded as one of the top two science titles in the world (the other being Science). Here's what Nature the publisher is doing, reported by Nature the journal:

From 2021, the publisher will charge €9,500, US$11,390 or £8,290 to make a paper open access (OA) in Nature and 32 other journals that currently keep most of their articles behind paywalls and are financed by subscriptions. It is also trialing a scheme that would halve that price for some journals, under a common-review system that might guide papers to a number of titles.

OA advocates are pleased that the publisher has found ways to offer open access to all authors, which it first committed to in April. But they are concerned about the price. The development is a "very significant" moment in the movement to make scientific articles free for all to read, but "it looks very expensive," says Stephen Curry, a structural biologist at Imperial College London.

The research will indeed by freely available to the world, but the authors' institutions have to cough up the massive sum of $11,000 for every article. That will make Nature compliant with Plan S, while ensuring that loads of money continues to roll in. It also means that educational institutions won't be saving any money when their researchers can read some Nature publishing papers for free, since they must pay out huge sums for their own academics to appear in these titles. This is a classic example of double-dipping -- what is more politely called "hybrid open access." Nature the publisher will get paid by institutions to make some articles freely available, but it will continue to be paid by subscribers to access material that has already been paid for. Plan S may mean that Nature and other publishers make even more money.

That's problematic, because more money for Nature and other journals means more money that the academic world has to pay as whole. One of the big hopes was that open access would not only provide free access to all publicly-funded research, but that the overall cost to institutions would come down dramatically. If they don't, then researchers in poorer countries are unlikely to be able to publish their work in leading journals, because their universities can't afford charges of $11,000 per article. Waiver schemes exist in some cases, but are unsatisfactory, because they effectively require researchers to beg for charity -- hardly what global access to knowledge is supposed to bring about.

At the heart of the problem lies the issue of a title's supposed prestige. Nature can probably get away with charging its extremely high open access rate because researchers are so keen to appear in it for the sake of their careers:

Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it is a "prestige tax", because it will pay for the journals' high rejection rates, but will not, in his opinion, guarantee higher quality or discoverability. "I think it would be absurd for any funder, university or author to pay it," he says.

A possible solution is to move to a publishing system based around preprints, which have proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way of getting important research out fast. With this approach, the issue of prestige is irrelevant, since papers are simply placed online directly, for anyone to access freely. That's going to be a hard transition. Not because there are deep problems with the idea, but because academics prefer to appear in journals like Nature and Science. Open access won't succeed until they realize that this is not just selfish but also ultimately harmful to their own academic work, which becomes warped by the perceived need to publish in prominent titles.

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Filed Under: academic research, copyright, costs, fees, knowledge, nature, open access, plan s
Companies: springer

To Prevent Free, Frictionless Access To Human Knowledge, Publishers Want Librarians To Be Afraid, Very Afraid

from the because-security dept

After many years of fierce resistance to open access, academic publishers have largely embraced -- and extended -- the idea, ensuring that their 35-40% profit margins live on. In the light of this subversion of the original hopes for open access, people have come up with other ways to provide free and frictionless access to knowledge -- most of which is paid for by taxpayers around the world. One is preprints, which are increasingly used by researchers to disseminate their results widely, without needing to worry about payment or gatekeepers. The other is through sites that have taken it upon themselves to offer immediate access to large numbers of academic papers -- so-called "shadow libraries". The most famous of these sites is Sci-Hub, created by Alexandra Elbakyan. At the time of writing, Sci-Hub claims to hold 79 85 million papers.

Even academics with access to publications through their institutional subscriptions often prefer to use Sci-Hub, because it is so much simpler and quicker. In this respect, Sci-Hub stands as a constant reproach to academic publishers, emphasizing that their products aren't very good in terms of serving libraries, which are paying expensive subscriptions for access. Not surprisingly, then, Sci-Hub has become Enemy No. 1 for academic publishers in general, and the leading company Elsevier in particular. The German site Netzpolitik has spotted the latest approach being taken by publishers to tackle this inconvenient and hugely successful rival, and other shadow libraries. At its heart lies the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI), which was founded by Elsevier and other large publishers earlier this year. Netzpolitik explains that the idea is to track and analyze every access to libraries, because "security":

Elsevier is campaigning for libraries to be upgraded with security technology. In a SNSI webinar entitled "Cybersecurity Landscape -- Protecting the Scholarly Infrastructure", hosted by two high-ranking Elsevier managers, one speaker recommended that publishers develop their own proxy or a proxy plug-in for libraries to access more (usage) data ("develop or subsidize a low cost proxy or a plug-in to existing proxies").

With the help of an "analysis engine", not only could the location of access be better narrowed down, but biometric data (e.g. typing speed) or conspicuous usage patterns (e.g. a pharmacy student suddenly interested in astrophysics) could also be recorded. Any doubts that this software could also be used -- if not primarily -- against shadow libraries were dispelled by the next speaker. An ex-FBI analyst and IT security consultant spoke about the security risks associated with the use of Sci-Hub.

Since academic publishers can't compete against Sci-Hub on ease of use or convenience, they are trying the old "security risk" angle -- also used by traditional software companies against open source in the early days. Yes, they say, Sci-Hub/open source may seem free and better, but think of the terrible security risks… An FAQ on the main SNSI site provides an "explanation" of why Sci-Hub is supposedly a security risk:

Sci-Hub may fall into the category of state-sponsored actors. It hosts stolen research papers which have been harvested from publisher platforms often using stolen user credentials. According to the Washington Post, the US Justice Department is currently investigating the founder of Sci-Hub, Alexandra Elbakayan, for links between her and Russian Intelligence. If there is substance to this investigation, then using Sci-Hub to access research papers could have much wider ramifications than just getting access to content that sits behind a paywall.

As Techdirt pointed out when that Washington Post article came out, there is no evidence of any connections between Elbakyan and Russian Intelligence. Indeed, it's hard not to see the investigation as simply the result of whining academic publishers making the same baseless accusation, and demanding that something be "done". An article in Research Information provides more details about what those "wider ramifications than just getting access to content that sits behind a paywall" might be:

In the specific case of Sci-Hub, academic content (journal articles and books) is illegally harvested using a variety of methods, such as abusing legitimate log in credentials to access the secure computer networks of major universities and by hijacking "proxy" credentials of legitimate users that facilitate off campus remote access to university computer systems and databases. These actions result in a front door being opened up into universities' networks through which Sci-Hub, and potentially others, can gain access to other valuable institutional databases such as personnel and medical records, patent information, and grant details.

But that's not how things work in this context. The credentials of legitimate users that Sci-Hub draws on -- often gladly "lent" by academics who believe papers should be made widely available -- are purely to access articles held on the system. They do not provide access to "other valuable institutional databases" -- and certainly not sensitive information such as "personnel and medical records" -- unless they are designed by complete idiots. That is pure scaremongering, while this further claim is just ridiculous:

Such activities threaten the scholarly communications ecosystem and the integrity of the academic record. Sci-Hub has no incentive to ensure the accuracy of the research articles being accessed, no incentive to ensure research meets ethical standards, and no incentive to retract or correct if issues arise.

Sci-Hub simply provides free, frictionless access for everyone to existing articles from academic publishers. The articles are still as accurate and ethical as they were when they first appeared. To accuse Sci-Hub of "threatening" the scholarly communications ecosystem by providing universal access is absurd. It's also revealing of the traditional publishers' attitude to the uncontrolled dissemination of publicly-funded human knowledge, which is what they really fear and are attacking with the new SNSI campaign.

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Filed Under: academic research, libraries, open access, publishers, security
Companies: elsevier, sci-hub

Open Access Faces Many Problems; Here's One That The Indispensable Internet Archive Is Helping To Solve

from the now-would-be-a-good-time-to-make-a-donation dept

As Techdirt has reported many times, open access is a self-evidently great idea, but one that is still beset with many problems. That's not least because academic publishers are keen to remain in control of any transition to open access, and aim to maintain their extremely high profit margins whatever the publishing model. But there's one problem for open access that ironically derives from its greatest strength -- the fact that anyone can access journals at any time, for free. Because material is always available, librarians have tended not to worry about making some kind of backup. That's not the case for traditional journals, where there is potentially a big problem if a subscription is cancelled. The end of a subscription often means that readers lose their existing access to journals. To address this, librarians have come up with a variety of ways to ensure "post-cancellation access", explained well in a 2007 post on a blog about digital preservation, written by David Rosenthal. A recent article on the Internet Archive site provides some interesting statistics on the scale of the problem of creating permanent copies of open access titles:

Of the 14.8 million known open access articles published since 1996, the Internet Archive has archived, identified, and made available through the Wayback Machine 9.1 million of them... In the jargon of Open Access, we are counting only "gold" and "hybrid" articles which we expect to be available directly from the publisher, as opposed to preprints, such as in arxiv.org or institutional repositories. Another 3.2 million are believed to be preserved by one or more contracted preservation organizations, based on records kept by Keepers Registry... These copies are not intended to be accessible to anybody unless the publisher becomes inaccessible, in which case they are "triggered" and become accessible.

This leaves at least 2.4 million Open Access articles at risk of vanishing from the web... While many of these are still on publisher's websites, these have proven difficult to archive.

That's a pretty serious problem, and one which the Internet Archive is taking steps to address, for example by trawling through the petabytes of Web content that it has built up since 1996. There's an editable catalog with an open API that aims to provide "Perpetual Access to Millions of Open Research Publications From Around The World". Internet Archive has also created a full-text search index to over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents.

Although few people are aware of this project, it is vital work. There is little point publishing open access titles, theoretically available to all, if their holdings simply disappear at some point in the future. The Internet Archive's copies will ensure that doesn't happen. They are yet another indication of the invaluable and unique role the site plays in the online world. Without it, we would already have lost so much of the amazing material that was once online, but which has since vanished except for the copies held by the Wayback Machine. Another good reason to support this incredible, free resource financially, and to help defend it from incredibly selfish attacks by publishers.

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Filed Under: culture, open access, research
Companies: internet archive

This Iowa Town Is Building An Open Access Fiber Broadband Network. Google Fiber Is Its First Customer

from the open-access-ftw dept

West Des Moines, Iowa this week announced that it would be building a massive, open access fiber network. The city is one of roughly 750 towns and cities that, frustrated by high prices, limited competition, and patchy availability of US broadband, have decided to instead build their own networks. Well, assuming that AT&T and Comcast haven't bribed your state officials to pass laws banning such efforts yet.

West Des Moines' new network will be funded by taxable General Obligation bonds with low interest rates. It's too early to note what kind of speeds and prices will be on offer, but the city's announcement indicates that Google Fiber will be one of its first customers:

"We couldn’t be more pleased to work with an outstanding company like Google Fiber to help make this happen,” Gaer said. “Now more than ever, reliable high-speed internet is critical. It’s amazing that in just four years, West Des Moines is well on its way to achieving the WDM 2036 Plan goal of finding an innovative way to provide access to broadband for all our residents and businesses."

It's semi-ironic given that before Google Fiber launched, Google insisted its own network would be open access -- before immediately conducting a 180 on the decision. According to the Des Moines Register, Google Fiber would pay the city $2.25 per month for each household that connects to the network, up to a maximum of $4.5 million over 20 years. Construction of the network begins this fall, and is estimated to last around two and a half years. When completed, West Des Moines will have better broadband than many tech-centric areas like Seattle or Silicon Valley.

In 2009, the FCC funded a Harvard study that concluded (pdf) that open access broadband networks (letting multiple ISPs come in and compete over a central, core network) resulted in lower broadband prices and better service. Of course when the FCC released its flimsy, politically timid "National Broadband Plan" back in 2010, this realization (not to mention an honest accounting of the sector's limited competition) was nowhere to be found.

Such networks have driven notable broadband success in countries like Sweden. But here in America, both US political parties, awash in campaign cash from Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and others, have spent decades ignoring this data to instead embrace a singular telecom policy: kissing AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast's collective ass. The result: the US remains mediocre in nearly every broadband metric that matters, and probably spends more time and resources denying this factual reality than actually addressing the problem.

Community broadband isn't some one size fits all panacea. But such options are a helpful niche solution that not only result in better connectivity, but drive incumbents to try a little bit harder, an alien concept in a country where regulatory capture and a lack of competition have been the norm for the better part of thirty years.

Instead of acknowledging this reality, telecom incumbents like AT&T, and the think tankers, lobbyists, regulators, lawmakers, consultants, and academics paid to love them, have spent years attempting to demonize community broadband, insisting such efforts are a guaranteed taxpayer boondoggle, an ominous threat to free speech, and a long list of other bullshit claims. Many of these same folks can't even acknowledge that US broadband isn't competitive, and most love ignoring the fact that these towns and cities wouldn't be considering the option if the private sector hadn't failed them, repeatedly.

There remains a rather singular solution to incumbent ISPs and their dollar per holler allies who falsely deem such efforts to be wasteful or unfair: start offering better, faster, cheaper service. If you're unwilling to do that, get the fuck out of the way.

Filed Under: competition, iowa, muni broadband, open access, west des moines

House Passes Massive Broadband Bill That Surprisingly Doesn't Suck

from the not-a-chance-in-hell dept

The majority of broadband bills that wind their way through Congress don't actually address the most pressing problem in US telecom: a lack of meaningful broadband competition. Often the bills focus almost exclusively on heavy subsidization of incumbent telecom monopolies, an approach that requires a level of diligence the U.S. has historically not been capable of. The Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act, which passed the House last week, certainly includes its fair share of subsidization, including $80 billion in fiscal year 2021 to help deploy fiber broadband networks to the underserved parts of the country.

But the bill also contains a number of other improvements most objective experts have long supported, including:

These are, again, all things that actual telecom policy experts (not to be conflated with the army of academics, think tankers, consultants, lobbyists and lawyers often tangentially employed by ISPs to help pretend US broadband isn't a shit show) have been advocating for for years. Many of them -- specifically "dig once" provisions and eliminating protectionist state laws -- generally have wide, bipartisan public support.

But while the bill passed the House with a vote of 233-188, there's not a chance in hell of it passing the Senate or getting Trump's signature. In large part because it runs in stark contrast to the Trump administration's and Pai FCC's approach to telecom policy, which largely involves doling out massive tax cuts, regulatory favors, and other perks to natural monopolies in exchange for massive layoffs and reduced overall sector investment. Then not only pretending that this approach worked wonders, but ignoring the high prices and limited competition that has plagued the US telecom sector for decades.

Like so many other things in tech policy (like net neutrality), actually recognizing a lack of competition in telecom -- and wanting to actually embrace pro-competition policies -- has somehow become a partisan issue, dooming us to inaction and further Comcast and AT&T dominance. While this bill is decent, its backers pushed it as election season fodder with the knowledge it won't pass. Without a dramatic Congressional shakeup, arm in arm with serious efforts to rein in Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon's dominance over state and federal legislatures, it likely never will.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, congress, dig once, fcc, house, lifeline, muni broadband, open access