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All published Hargreaves IP Review submissions are .pdf files with names of type http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview-c4e-sub- followed by filename e.g http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview-c4e-sub-scibella.pdf
So click on following link to open up the google search result for site:ipo.gov.uk/ipreview-c4e-sub- in a new window then type in your search term e.g. “fair use” at the beginning before “site:…..”
Happy searching
Updates: March 25 – finally got submission published- see after March 24th entry – for IPO reason for delay and (excuse me) a sarcastic rant at their excuse.
updates: July 24th have discovered from FOI disclosure log http://www.ipo.gov.uk/foi-log160.pdf that Scibella submission was redacted,without informing me. (Hat tip to Tweeps @copyrightgirl and @filemot). I have now appended the full e-mails between Scibella & IPO about publication of my submission. Bad enough to have to struggle to get the submission published, to discover that appendix 1 (extract from BBSRC website terms and conditions) has gone missing – Grrr.. I Am going to contact IPO to confirm what they redacted and the reason. Suspect that they considered the 700 word extract was not fair dealing for purposes of review and criticism but infringed BBSRC copyright. I’ll hold my fire till I know more.
“Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed” Othello Act 3, scene 3, 155–161
March 24th:
IP REVIEW response Peter Carroll (Scibella) (.pdf 203 Kb) (including Appendix 1 not published on IPO website)
Summary:
Scibella wants to make transformative re-use of UK university & research council website and other material to set up a Current Research Information Service . In particular job ads for research posts past their application date which give details of People, Units, Projects. These appear to have copyright protection for 70 years!
Problem is that copyright on nearly all sites allows only fair dealing for private research any other other use requires “express written permission”. This locks information in. If you know where to look its there – a “pull” model but a “push” model for wider dissemination is not allowed. Over 100 organisations to try and get permission from.
Two solutions for Scibella:
Incorporate Scibella in USA where a fair use defence for a transformative re-use of job ads could be argued . Don’t want to do this, USA very litigatious and couldn’t afford to defend.
Could any aspects of fair use be introduced into UK? Yes, probably Gowers review recommendation 11 on transformative works. This seems to have fallen between two stools.
Not taken forward in UK as Gowers refers to changing EU directive. However, EU have IViR (Amsterdam) study that says Gowers seeking change at EU level is wrong as EU directive does not cover harmonisation of “adaptation”.
Therefore UK could introduce Gowers recommendation 11 without prior change in EU law. Gowers 11 including explicit mention of Berne 3 Step test criteria could establish UK version of fair-use, at least for transformative works, contained within a more defined framework than USA. This could avoid excessive litigation.
The problems of defining “transformative” could be outweighed by advantages to UK economy, particularly relocation of creative industries into UK to take advantage of the exception.
Second Solution:
Extend Open Government License for re-use of public sector information coverage to include universities and research councils. EU has consulted on this twice in 2008 and 2010. 2010 consultation shows a majority of respondents in favour of extension. However, APPSI has moved from having no position in 2008 to disagreeing with extension in 2010. Reason given in 2010 is that they “have seen no evidence from a UK perspective that would suggest the Directive needs to apply to these bodies.” Not clear from this response what exactly that means – statement of fact-no evidence received – or evidence seen, evaluated and conclusion made.
BBSRC (research council) terms for use of new grants database very similiar to Open Government License so change is happening anyway.
Update: 25th March. Submission finally published by IPO. So there it is under S for Scibella tucked up with its companions .
Oh, and the reason for the delay::
“The team wanted to ensure that you are happy for this to be made public before placing it on our website. I will take it from your email that you are expecting this to be made public and will now send to our web team for publishing.”
How kind of them to think of my happiness whilst so busy themselves. After I had finished laughing I started to think a bit..
Now the default mode for submission is publication in toto unless
“If you do not want part or whole of your response or name to be made public please state this clearly in the response, explaining why you regard the information you have provided as confidential.”
(see page 9 of the call for evidence for the rest of the small print)
Re-read my submission, no nothing I could see that I had clearly stated should be regarded as confidential. Ah, but maybe the IPO is staffed with graduates skilled in deconstruction of the text. Readers of Baudrillard and Lacan. Had they spotted some unconscious tension within the text between my desire to reveal and my desire to hide. Maybe a méconnaissance of my true intentions? Re-read again, no to my eyes at least, a plain piece of anglo saxon “sweat of the brow” composition with no literary originality or merit.
Next, had I encoded Dan Brown style a message in the submission? Did the Ascii values of sentence word length spell .. I.. DO.. NOT.. WANT.. Still waiting for GCHQ to come back on this one..
So, more thinking. Maybe they wanted to save me from myself.
a) The submission is so risible that people would snigger behind my back at the gym.. no one would speak to me at the squash club.. Twitter would untweet me.. Facebook would efface me. Thank you team but I’ll take my chances. Being an internet hill-billy from the back of beyond there are no cyber-metropolitan charmed circles I am part of.
b) I had given away my business plan, sold my birthright for a mess of pottage. True, for many years I kept quiet about what I was doing until I realised no-one was going to steal my idea. Probably dozens of people have had the same idea and realised that under present copyright law it’s dead in the water. Just me then , plugging on because I’ve got 10 years of content which has turned into a tiger from which I cannot dismount. Now, I would be glad to seek collaboration because this project has become a long and lonely road.
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita” Dante Inferno Canto 1.
So copy on but just remember who’s got the data mine.
c) I might upset the powers that be- e.g. the universities & research councils from which, at the end of the day, I will have to get permission, one by one, committee by committee. Sorry team but my estimation of the probability that any of those powers will ever read my submission is close to zero.
OK let’s leave it there..sarcasm done.. at least I got it published. Still wonder what the real reason was?
Update: July 24th:
emails between scibella & IPO
email 1 – Scibella to IPO pretty please where’s my submission?
Da: pete carroll [pete.carroll@scibella.com]
Inviato: martedì 22 marzo 2011 14.28
A: ‘ipreview@ipo.gov.uk’
Oggetto: Missing submission, Carroll Peter, (Scibella.com)
Priorità: Alta
Dear Sirs
I am rather concerned that my submission in response to the Call for Evidence has not appeared in the list of submissions received. It was emailed to you on 2nd march, before the 4th March deadline, and I received a response from yourselves that it had been received. See below. I can only assume, at this stage, that some mistake has been made, I quite understand that with a large number of submissions this can happen. I would be grateful if it could be added to the list as soon as possible so that it forms part of the body of evidence.
However, if there is any other reason as to why it has not been included I would appreciate as soon as possible some answer from yourselves as to why it is not appropriate for it to be included in the list of submissions on your website.
Thank you for your prompt consideration of this matter.
Peter Carroll
From callforevidence [callforevidence@ipo.gov.uk] sent 02/03/2011 18.04
“Thank you for your submission to the Call for Evidence for the Review of Intellectual Property and Growth. The information you have provided will be recorded and considered carefully.
As indicated in the Call for Evidence, submissions made to the Review will be published on the Review’s website http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview.htm in the near future unless you have indicated in your response you do not wish this to happen (as outlined on page 9 of the Call for Evidence.) We may refer to submissions received in the Review blog.
You can follow the progress of the Review on the blog here http://www.uk-ipo.net/blog/. We welcome your participation.
Best wishes
Professor Ian Hargreaves and the Review Team.
—–Original Message—–
From: pete carroll [mailto:pete.carroll@scibella.com]
Sent: 02 March 2011 15:58
To: callforevidence
Subject: Peter Carroll (Scibella) Response to call for evidence
Importance: High
Re: Hargreaves Review
Please find attached cover sheet and my response as word (.doc) files. If you have any problems in opening them please do not hesitate to contact me.
Peter Carroll”
e-mail 2 Scibella to IPO, not at all pretty please – get this sorted or else.
Da: pete carroll [pete.carroll@scibella.com]
Inviato: venerdì 25 marzo 2011 12.53
A: ‘information@ipo.gov.uk’
Cc: ‘HargreavesI@cardiff.ac.uk’; ‘ianhargreaves@msn.com’
Oggetto: FAO: Robin Webb, Director of Innovation
Re: Hargreaves IP Review submission by Carroll, Peter (Scibella) missing from published list. No response from IPO
I know you must all be very busy but can you get someone in the IP review support team to sort this out asap. Background. Submitted 2nd march via pete.carroll@scibella.com – received acceptance response 02/03/2011 18.04. When full list published 17 march not there. Waited over weekend. Monday 21st @scibella asked via twitter @ip_review_uk all published? Answer, yes. Follow up tweet same day from @scibella to @ip_review_uk, you sure etc? so where’s mine? No further response to @scibella from @ip_review_uk via twitter channels. Follow up email Tuesday Mar 22 from pete.carroll@scibella.com to ipreview@ipo.gov.uk. Subject Missing submission, Carroll Peter, (Scibella.com). Gist Sure it’s a mistake etc- but if not please give reason. E-mail opened at your end Tuesday, March 22, 2011 1:56:49 PM. Now Friday, no reply- zilch, not even 30 second- thanks we’re looking into it will get back first response. Bloody pissed off with this, smacks of indifference towards the small guy, the SME. If Google or BPI submission had gone missing would it have been the same silence? Don’t think so.
Ok, your IPO contact page says response within 1 working day. Let’s say 2 working days (you’re busy). So no satisfactory response by end of play on Tuesday 29th and the story becomes about IPO silence, conspiracy or cock-up, etc. Will do my best to get it out to all interested parties, press, IP blogosphere. Think about it.
Ps: submission now in pdf format on http://bit.ly/i5Biq3 you can copy from there if it helps IPO.
Regards
Pete Carroll
Strada Castagna Bassa, 3
Calosso, Piemonte, Italy
Tel: 0039 0141 853446
Email: pete.carroll@scibella.com
e-mail 3 IPO to Scibella – holding reply
Da: Information [Information@ipo.gov.uk]
Inviato: venerdì 25 marzo 2011 16.03
A: ‘pete carroll’
Cc: HargreavesI@cardiff.ac.uk; ianhargreaves@msn.com
Oggetto: RE: Robin Webb, Director of Innovation
Dear Pete,
I have forwarded your email onto Robin Webb, who will look into your enquiry and respond in due course.
Yours sincerely
(name redacted by Pete Carroll)
Information Centre Manager
IPO
e-mail 4 IPO to Scibella – success at last, submission will be published
Da: ipreview [ipreview@ipo.gov.uk]
Inviato: venerdì 25 marzo 2011 15.23
A: ‘pete carroll’
Oggetto: RE: Missing submission, Carroll Peter, (Scibella.com)
Dear Pete,
Thank you for your email and your input to the review. Your submission has been recorded and will be considered along with the other submissions received.
Please accept my apology for the time it has taken in replying to you and for the delay in publishing your submission. The team wanted to ensure that you are happy for this to be made public before placing it on our website.
I will take it from your email that you are expecting this to be made public and will now send to our web team for publishing. This will appear on our website by 4:30pm today.
Kind regards
(name redacted by Peter Carroll)
IP Review team
—–Original Message—–
From: pete carroll [mailto:pete.carroll@scibella.com]
Sent: 22 March 2011 13:28
To: ipreview
Subject: Missing submission, Carroll Peter, (Scibella.com)
Importance: High
Dear Sirs>>>>
I tweeted via http://twitter.com/scibella
copyright status of old university vacancy ads – publish and be damned? http://bit.ly/htKNm3 @copyrightgirl @IP_Review_UK #IP_Review 5:26 PM Jan 30th via web
Thank you to Emily Goodhand http://copyright4education.blogspot.com/
for taking the time to reply and raising some good points. My response to her comments are below in blue
@copyrightgirl Emily Goodhand @scibella that’s a very interesting one! It’s true, the lifespan of a job advert is not long, and the employer would own the copyright…
See final points below
@copyrightgirl Emily Goodhand @scibella do you absolutely have to use the full-text? Or can you just mine the appropriate data? Copyright does not protect facts – could..
Two sides to this.
1. Practical – I can program to data extract from html structure of JAC ad between two points beginning advert text and end of advert text. At present can’t go down into text to extract paragraphs relevant to a CRIS and exclude general job bumf. Can probably do but it’s hassle. Anyway, more granularity wouldn’t help – point 2 below.
2. Copyright Law. Protection extends to a ” substantial part” of the work. This can be very small as in 11 word danish case (keyword + 5 words on either side to provide context) see:
provided that the ““intellectual creation of the author” was copied in that extract. Even newspaper headlines can be copyright protected:http://www.freehills.com/6830.aspx
I am working on entity extraction programs to go through adverts but what they extract beyond the “facts” of name,unit, and this is the tricky programming part -a title- would probably be copyright covered. I.e. all context to provide meaning to the title. UK case law seems to be that only “insignificant” = unsubstantial. Everything else- i.e. context that provides significance is substantial. Hey,ho – not much encouragement there to write entity extraction programs.
@copyrightgirl Emily Goodhand @scibella it be argued that this piece of work is purely factual and does not attract sufficient creative originality to be copyrighted?22 hours ago
I agree a job ad is hardly Shakespeare or Milton but that doesn’t seem to be the test. UK case law appears to be that creativity = “sweat of the brow” – if it takes some intellectual effort to compose then it is a protected literary work. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
Final points:
All this makes me wonder if copyright law in the 21st century just “doesn’t get” what the impact of moving from print to web for has been. I’ll try to explain.
In the days of the steam press access to dissemination of information/knowledge was restricted through a few points – publishers- and relatively few people – “writers” who were mostly the “bourgeoisie” and above. It was not easy to write (pre word processing) & publish so writing and publishing represented substantial effort- intellectual property- which was intended to have a lasting relevance. Rather like crafting by hand a fine piece of furniture- a family heirloom. Copyright law reflected the values of this class – writing was property and the law existed as walls and bars to protect this property.
With the web has come about a immense “democratisation” of this process and more importantly a change in the purpose of writing/publishing. Most publication on the web is “ephemera” not intended to last but do a job- passing on information and opinion etc. via blog, tweet, website etc. To return to the furniture analogy – it’s Ikea not Chippendale. A primary purpose of this ephemera is self publicity for individuals and organisations- this is is what I/we think- this is what I/we do. It’s aim is to spread as widely as possible, not to be a creative monument.
Yet copyright law still treats this ephemeral side of web publication as valuable IP. The twitter tweets of a 30 something with, we hope, a life expectancy of 90+ are (unless things change) treated as valuable enough to retain copyright protection well into the 22nd century.
Just doesn’t make sense to me. Perhaps the default for web publication should be something like the creative commons CC-BY license, exertion of the moral right of attribution, but no attached economic IP rights. I.e. turn the system upside down.. rather than opting-out of protection by CC etc. – opt in for more substantial work to licensing that preserves IP rights.
update: just come across this great Nina Paley cartoon- says it all..
Scibella is a project to set up a CRIS (Current Research Information Service) for UK public sector research in science & technology. At the core of a CRIS is People, Projects, Units (PPU). Who is doing what, where. The raw data for Scibella would come from vacancy adverts like the one below from the University of Bath in 2008 – 2 years ago.
Research Assistant
Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology
(6 months fixed term from 27th October 2008)
Ref: 08395PPA
Description: 36.5 hours per week. Applications are invited for a Research Assistant to prepare photoactivatable caged iron chelators, for application in local non-systemic therapy of cancer. The successful candidate will be engaged in the synthesis of novel photo-cleavable protecting groups, their application for the preparation of new caged chelator derivatives, and the characterisation and in vitro evaluation of the latter compounds. A strong background in synthetic organic chemistry is essential, and significant experience in the use of analytical and preparative HPLC techniques would be an advantage. For further details please contact Dr Ian Eggleston (i.eggleston@bath.ac.uk).
Salary: £22,332
Contact: An online application form is accessible here. Alternatively please email: jobs@bath.ac.uk or call 01225 386924 quoting ref number 08395PPA
Closing Date: 17th October 2008
Terms & Conditions: Click here For Terms & Conditions.
Further Particulars: Click here For Further Details.
General Information: Click here For General Information.
Maps: Click here For Maps.
An Equal Opportunities Employer.
You can apply for this position by filling out an on-line application form.
From this ad can be extracted the following minimum PPU info
People: Dr Ian Eggleston (i.eggleston@bath.ac.uk)
Project title: photoactivatable caged iron chelators.
Unit: Bath. Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology.
I think this PPU info is factual and therefore not covered by copyright. So far, so good.
But there is obviously more project info in the complete advert text. Text which presumably has enough creative content to be covered by copyright.
So, here is the copyright statement for the University of Bath website:
Copyright
All material on any of the University’s Web sites is, unless specified otherwise, copyright of the University of Bath and may not be reproduced without prior permission.
You may copy, print or download onto disc material for non-commercial use provided that any existing copyright or other intellectual property notices are retained.
You may not use or distribute material from this site or change the content of these pages in any way for any public or commercial purpose other than with the express written consent of the University of Bath and on such terms as the University of Bath may specify.
The University logo is a registered trade mark of University of Bath and should not be used without permission; requests to use the logo should be sent to web-support@bath.ac.uk.
Fairly standard terms for UK universities, fair dealing for private research and study. Anything else – get permission first and be prepared to negotiate terms.
Here is my problem – I want to be able to use the full advert text in the CRIS. This is not for private research or study, but for public and maybe commercial purpose. I am sure that if I contact all the UK universities and can find the right person to deal with and wait for someone ,or some committee, to decide that it is OK for me to do so that I may get all the permissions required. But this lengthy process, and its uncertainty of outcome, is certainly a deterrent to setting up a CRIS whose purpose is to disseminate information to other researchers, facilitate collaboration between Universities and the private sector, etc. All good and worthy aims which no doubt every university would support.
Never mind that, the job ad has done its job, has expired, is no more (apologies to Monty Python fans!), has no further economic value to the University, is no longer on the university website but perhaps, and only perhaps, archived somewhere on some disc or other that only Fred in the IT department knows about – this advert text is covered by copyright until 2078.. Use it without “written permission” and I infringe copyright law.
This offends my sense of natural justice. It is as if someone has discarded a worn-out tyre by the road and a poor peasant comes along thinking, ah I can re-use that. Shoes for myself and family. Then, one day, the tyre owner turns up and says to the peasant – that’s still my tyre, I didn’t give you permission to re-use it, off to court you go.
So what should the right copyright status be for an expired job advert? Any comments would be very gratefully received.
to be continued (Part 2. creative commons licence CC BY for university websites?)
Proposed classification areas for PUPs (people units projects)
based on HESA classification scheme as it would tie in with UK Higher Education Statistical Agency output for numbers of Phds, Researchers etc. Read the rest of this entry »
