Roundtable on Access – the digital rail gauge

Posted on June 1, 2009 by wittylama

After the amazing Copyright Future conference held this week [good 30 second summary here], Wikimedia Australia was invited to attend a select roundtable meeting of cultural institutions and ‘thought leaders’ on the topic of Open(ing) Access to Australia’s cultural heritage.

Interestingly, what we seemed to discover was that whilst every institution – and I’m talking the major national organisations here – is theoretically on board with the idea of opening up and sharing their content, in practice they each have independent policies that stymie this. It’s rather like the way that Australia doesn’t have a consistent rail gauge – nothing really connects up and everyone is duplicating each others’ efforts…

(Dual-gauge railway track in Wallaroo, South Australia)

When it became clear that the problems standing in the way of greater access and harmonisation were procedural (rather than problems of infrastructure as with the railways) I piped up and asked the somewhat provocative question of why most of Australia’s cultural institutions used generic access-restriction phrases on every single item in their collection irrespective of its age/access policy/copyright. Here are three of many examples:

(exhibit 1)
(exhibit 1)
(exhibit 2)
(exhibit 2)

[exhibit 3]

(exhibit 3)

A bit of backstory…

At this point I would like to refer you to the excellent blogpost by Sage Ross, grad student at Yale, from January this year entitled “Libraries and Copyfraud”. It explains the situation Wikimedians find themselves in when working with cultural institutions who make these kinds of blanket statements. Here is the key paragraph where Sage describes his attempt to access an already digitised copy of a portrait of Charles Darwin from the Huntington Library:

…In the exchange that followed, I tried to explain why the library has neither the moral nor legal right to pretend authority over the image (although, I pointed out, charging fees for distribution is fine, even if their fees are pretty steep). A Curatorial Assistant, and then a Curator, tried to explain to me that the Huntington actually has generous lending policies (you don’t “lend” a PD [public domain] digital image, I replied), that while the original is PD, using the digital file is “fair use” that library has the right to enforce (fair use, by definition, only applies to copyrighted works, I replied), that having the physical copy entails the right to grant, or not, permission to use reproductions (see Bridgeman v. Corel, I replied), that other libraries and museums do the same thing (that doesn’t make it right, I replied), that big corporations might use it without giving the library a cut if they didn’t claim rights (nevertheless, claiming such rights is called copyfraud and it’s a crime, I replied), and finally that I should contact the Yale libraries and museums and see if they do things any differently (a return to the earlier “everyone else does it” argument with a pinch of ad hominem for good measure, to which I see no point in replying)….

Apart from some differences of law [See footnote 1 for the three main differences between his circumstances in the US and those in Australia] his experience in coming up against the “everyone else does it” argument is entirely familiar. Another important argument raised by cultural institutions for these kinds of access policies – one for which I have much sympathy – is that due to depleted “core funding” the institutions need to charge customers in order to pay for their daily operations.

So, back to the roundtable meeting…

From where I was sitting, it appeared that those who represented cultural institutions were saying: “well yes, of course we charge access fees. It’s a business model and we need the funding. Everyone else does it…” At the same time the lawyers and academics were saying: “well no, of course they wouldn’t do that. The content is already online so there’s no basis in law for the fee to be applied…” This was the moment where everyone looked at one other and said: “Ah, Houston we have a problem“. But it is from these kinds of moments that the best kind of collaboration can occur. And so in our case, although the problem is not new, there seemed to be an awareness that specific measures need to be taken.

Into this breach stepped Dr. Prodromous Tsiavos who has been dealing with similar issues in the UK. He broke it down into three specific areas. I believe that if all Australia’s cultural institutions signed on to his suggestions, we would be in a much happier place because we would all be rolling on the same digital rail gauge.

1) Standard Access policy

Setting aside the issue of copyright, there is no agreed-upon “best-practice access model”. Each institution’s legal department writes its own rules and then the front-line staff have to enforce them. This is a recipe for confusion, frustration and the creation of organisational fiefdoms. It would be of great assistance if there was a document from the federal government stating the principles that they recommend publicly-funded institutions follow. Perhaps this would be a task that the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) could undertake?  Trying to access a particular (public domain) image from the collection of one of Australia’s peak cultural institutions, I ended up speaking with staff from three different levels. Each one overruled the other whilst referencing the same access policy. The range of policies in effect across the country is broad. Some institutions say they allow personal/private use; some say they allow educational use; some ask for an access form to be submitted; some require a clickthrough agreement to their terms of use; some use technical protection measures (TPMs) to inhibit access (such as using unstable URLs, popup windows and embedding files in the .flv (adobe flash) format) yet others offer a “download here” button.

I would suggest we look to the Library of Congress in the US for a best-practice example. They do not have any generic statement on items. Their copyright information page gives details about how you can make your own assessment on the copyright status. They also publish a list of the “rights and restrictions” for many of their works so that you can see for yourself what the rules of the game are and where to go for further permission (when required).

2) Licence Toolkit

Once it is determined that a licence is required, each institution currently has its own separate system for drafting agreements. This is not relevant to Wikimedia as everything on Wikimedia projects must allow downstream access/usage. Nevertheless, it is a huge time and cost burden on the thousands of end-users of Australia’s cultural heritage. Drafting and managing these kinds of agreements takes approximately 70% of my work time at the Dictionary of Sydney despite the fact that each of the agreements has the same restrictions and warranties. One of the key advantages of the Creative Commons licencing scheme is the way it is “off the shelf” and “mix and match”. Rather than every institutions having to draft and manage bespoke licences that say effectively the same thing it would be good if there were a standard licence toolkit which everyone could access. Again, the federal government could play a role here as I am willing to bet my left arm that this measure alone would produce huge labour and cost efficiencies. People could stop worrying about managing licences and start getting down to the business. And I mean business. How much money and time is spent by the cultural production houses like the ABC and SBS tracking down and managing licenses when that money could be better spent in producing content.

The Australian Copyright Council would no doubt be appalled by this idea. Despite the fact that they are government funded to provide neutral copyright advice they behave as if they have a vested interest is in maintaining complexity in the licencing system. Their dislike of the Creative Commons system, precisely because it is “off the shelf”, is testament to that. Unfortunately, because of their own access conditions to their (government funded) work, I am not allowed to talk about what they have to say. This is what is written on the last page of their “Creative Commons licences (information sheet) GO94”. Oh the irony…

acc

3) Standard Workflow

Standard workflow is a corollary of the first two points. If you have a standard policy for access, and you have a clear system of licensing usage for items still in copyright, then you need a standard way of managing the process. Each institution currently has a different format for directing access/licence requests and these requests pass through different departments. For example, sometimes I am simply asked to notify by email my having received permission for use of an in-copyright work; sometimes I need to fill out and fax a monthly form; sometimes I need to wait for that form to be signed by a copyright officer and returned; sometimes I need to send an image gallery of the items I intend to use; and so on … It would be more efficient for the organisation and easier for the customer if the processes were simpler and the default policy was built around access rather than restriction.

I have a strong feeling that these issues are going to be raised at the upcoming GLAM-WIKI meeting in Canberra. In fact, since I’m the one convening it, I’m going to make sure they do. We need to all be rolling on the same digital rail gauge.

Peace, love & metadata to all.

Liam

[footnote 1] There are three big differences between his circumstance and that in Australia – 1) the idea of Public Domain [PD] is not actually enshrined in law in Australia as it is in America. It’s never actually been tested – so I hear. In the exact reverse of the American experience it is impossible for the Australian government to license something as PD and even the CreativeCommonsZero license is on shaky ground here. 2) We don’t have “fair use” but rather “fair dealing” which is in effect much more restricted. In the US-AU free trade agreement we managed to get US-style copyright term extentions but failed to get any of their generous copyright exceptions to match. 3) Bridgeman v. Corel is not a binding precedent in the Australian jurisdiction.

Posted in copyright, museums | 2 Comments

The future of the Digital Economy, or not…

Posted on May 20, 2009 by wittylama

Thank you Brianna for pointing out that the Australian Department of Communications, Broadband and the Digital Economy (with the memorable acronym DCBDE) has published all 116 public submissions to their ‘consultation draft’ for the Digital Economy Future Directions Paper.

dbcde

You can find Wikimedia Australia’s two cents right down at the bottom between the “West Gippsland Regional Library Corporation” and “Yahoo!”. The perils of having a name that starts with a “W” I know only too well…

There are submissions from the usual suspects (Telstra, Google, Microsoft, seven from IBM and one from Sony – the corporation with a CEO that “…doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet…“) as well as some from organisations you wouldn’t expext, like Lonely Planet – yes, the travel publishing company. LP focus their submission on Australia’s “Safe Harbour” scheme and why they believe it should be strengthened. They even favourably namedrop Wikipedia. How very kind of them. On page 4 they write:

In short, interactivity and collaboration have become the mantra of the digital age.

The use of interactive and collaborative communications technology is often economically and socially valuable. For example:
Wikipedia provides an outlet for subject matter experts to self-publish and share knowledge with the world on all varieties of topics, thus providing an ever increasingly helpful research tool, as well as a public forum for new, topical or arcane issues;

There is also another group of submissions – althogether expected – from the copyright collection agencies and related groups who represent a copyright maximalist stance.

What strikes me as interesting is the dichotomy. On the other hand, there are the submissions from organisations that represent education, research, user groups and the like, which all talk about innovation, collaboration, sharing, development. On the other hand, there are submissions from the copyright clan, which all talk about protection, theft, exploitation (the good kind – commercially, by them) and exploitation (the bad kind – any, by you) etc. It is as if they were speaking two different languages. Here are some highlights:

I like how they have decided to not let you copy text in their PDF. It's like they're afraid of someone quoting them. Wonder why?

(I like the way they have decided to not let you copy text in their PDF, here's a screengrab instead.)

In other words – better access to modern communications technology will harm the business model of corporations who rely on people being passive consumers of cultural output (such as ‘you’ll get what you’re given’ television and cinema). This is the same as saying that better access to motor vehicles harms the horse & carriage industry, which is very true, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing.

“The Government should look to strengthen rather than dilute its copyright regulations and introduce no new exceptions to the Copyright Act without conducting a thorough, fundamental review of the legislation to take into account the needs of the digital economy” [p3.]

In other words – they think Copyright laws are too lax. Exceptions that are being proposed (such as allowing teachers to display free, public websites in schools without paying royalties) go too far down the road of making “free education” practically viable. You wouldn’t have thought that it would even require an exception but apparently Australia is the only country in the world that requires educational institutions to pay to use publicly available websites. The school system is asking for an exception to this but it is being opposed…

“The introduction of “access” services is the single most important current development in the music business. Online services like Nokia’s Comes With Music are transforming the way people enjoy music, offering more choice in music downloads than ever before. Music track sales were up to 1.4 billion globally in 2008.” [p3]

Later in the same page (and elsewhere in the document) they go into detail about how much money the industry is losing to filesharing of in-copyright music. At least the Australian music industry peak body is not suggesting that every illegal download equals a lost sale. They figure it’s 1 in 5 (same page) – this is not what they used to say and the change to a more reasonable method for calculating potential lost sales should be recognised. However, combining in the one page a section that says how well the industry is doing out of digital sales followed by a much lengthier section about how much the industry is losing, seems to be trying to make an argument both ways at the same time. That is, they argue that the industry is healthy, responsive to market changes and important to the national economy. At the same time they argue that it is being attacked and in need of government regulatory support.

“The Consultation Paper refers to the Powerhouse Museum and the State Library of NSW having recently placed photographs (in which copyright has expired) from their
collections onto the US website Flickr. Flickr generates revenue, through advertising, for its US owner, Yahoo…”

“…When considering the success of this project, however, the generation of revenue that does not come back to the collecting institutions to further their activities must be
taken into account. That must be weighed against factors such as the numbers of people who view the items online, whether those are the people the collecting
institution wants to reach, and the quantity and relevance to the collecting institutions of the information about the photographs contributed by Flickr users.” [p3]

one of the wonderful images taken from the PHM archive, placed on Flickr, then copies across to Wikimedia Commons.

(One of the wonderful images taken from the PHM archive, placed on Flickr, then copied across to Wikimedia Commons.)

This seems to directly contradict what the Powerhouse Museum (PHM) is reporting about their decision to put their pictures on Flickr. Their image services manager presented a paper at the recent “Museums and the Web” conference entitled “Open licensing and the future for collections” on exactly this topic. On all metrics this experiment has been a success – even to the point of reducing the number of phone calls to the curatorial staff from the public wanting to ask simple questions. People now ask their questions on the Flickr comments section where the rest of the viewing community can usually answer satisfactorally – allowing the staff to be more productive.

The ACC also suggests that the PHM has willingly or unintentionally ‘sold out’ to an overseas commercial company.

First the ‘commercial’ aspect: In Wikimedia-land, we have copied across onto Wikimedia commons many of these photographs and would indeed like to see the Powerhouse upload directly there – Wikimedia being non-commercial after all. But we understand that Flickr offers a better workflow for collection management and also has a larger direct audience than Wikimedia-Commons. As they are Public Domain images anyway, Wikimedians can copy the images freely by themselves. If the Powerhouse had chosen to put a digital padlock on the images then there would be a problem and the proprietary nature of the Flickr system would be rightly questionable as the best method for publication. However, since the Powerhouse are using this tool the way it should – to encourage access rather than to extend restrictions to a new platform – everyone is happy. Hey, even Obama’s doin’ it.

Secondly, the ‘overseas’ aspect: There is an expectation, and indeed a requirement, that government funded content be hosted on Australian websites so that it remains within the national jurisdiction. There is also an element of the ‘national interest’ argument here, along the same lines as why we want to be able to build our own submarines and not have to rely on foreign contractors. I understand and in fact agree with this concern – I would like Australia to be self-sufficient in providing access to its own culture. However, what the ACC submission does not mention is that all of these photographs placed on Flickr were already available on the PHM website – which is hosted within Australia. As with the commercial discussion above, if the PHM had published exclusively on foreign websites then this would be a problem. But given that these are copies of Public Domain images published on their own website and the original objects are all safely stored away (in Australia) the PHM did not do anything that would go against their mandate to protect Australian cultural independence.

I love what they've done with the fax-machine motif there. [p3]

I love what they've done with the fax-machine motif there. (p3)

CAL’s submission focuses mainly on the suggestion that the Government might be looking into releasing Public Sector Information (PSI), you know, like, publicly. An extension of the “it’s taxpayer money that paid for it to be written so why should we have to pay to read it” argument. One of the most obvious roads to do this would be to adopt Creative Commons licensing – a step that some agencies are already taking up, such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics publishing under the CC-by license.

The particular argument being used here against putting PSI under a Creative Commons license is a new one – for me at least. It seems to be saying that by using CC licensing, people would be able to rework the government’s words to mean something they did not originally intend and the government would have no way of stopping them. Since when is that a concern of copyright law? More than likely there will be many incorrect quotations and incorporations of PSI into other materials but the copyright status of the PSI one way or the other will have no effect on this. People misquote and misconstrue (intentionally and unintentionally) PSI all the time and no one is especially bothered – and that is with Crown Copyright firmly in place. In a cost/benefit analysis the question would be: How great are the potential advantages of allowing the public greater freedom of use of the the content that already own as taxpayers, relative to the potential harm associated with an increase in misquotations as a result of copyright licensing changes.

And in recognition of your having read down this far, I award you the Copyright Society of the United States’ hastily drawn “copyright cat” .gif:

I think they're serious too!

Posted in copyright | 2 Comments

'Converting' the tribe

Posted on May 17, 2009 by wittylama

As this is the first post since being added to Wikimedia Planet I’d better make it a good one!

Those who know me will know that I’m especially keen to see professionals with expert knowledge in a particular area join up to the Wikimedia movement. Furthermore, you might know that I’m particularly keen on museums and galleries (more about them later). The argument that we’ve already taken the “low hanging fruit” on [the English] Wikipedia only gives added impetus to our challenge to seek out and convince experts to share with us what they have learnt over a lifetime of study. The trick is how to do it…

Personally, I think the most effective method of getting experts  is not to try and convince people one-by-one to write on Wikipedia. This might work, but it doesn’t scale and its inefficient in terms of evangelist resources. Rather, I argue that we should be targeting people in positions of authority (especially persuasive authority).

Let me explain:

In Malcom Gladwell’s bestselling popular psychology book “The Tipping Point” he describes how Christian missionaries were so successful in converting rural communities across the globe. Rather than try to convert the whole tribe at once, or going house to house, they converted the existing charismatic leader in the community. We all know that you can be told something by an advertisement 50 times but when that same thing is told to you by someone you look up to, then you actually start to listen. That’s the power of personal recommendation. The Christian missionaries didn’t convert all the tribespeople, no. They converted one person and then the rest of the tribe converted themselves.

So, if we want to reach out to expert communities we first need to lower the barriers to their entry in the first place (such as the usability initiative – Forza!) but then we need to identify leaders in that area and teach them as much as we can – in order that they can teach their colleagues. Our efforts so far in working with scientists have been pretty good. They like us, they’re technically minded, they’re very computer literate, they’re used to open-access. None of these things are the case for the (old-school) of the museum sector – my favourite expert group which I mentioned in the first paragraph – and that’s where all the beautifully hidden expertise lies.

Unlike scientific articles in Wikipedia, articles which pertain to museum and gallery objects (paintings, sculptures, artifacts) rarely have any references back to the institution that actually works with/owns/displays that object. For example we recently displayed a featured article on the main page of Wikipedia about a painting, [[The raft of the Medusa]] – but the link to the catalogue record for the painting in the gallery that owns it – the Louvre – was not added until after it had left the main page. This indicates that we are completely ingoring the people that know most about the subject of these kinds of articles – the museums and galleries that actually own them!

Therefore, what I propose is one painting. Rather than to try and ‘convert the whole tribe’ in museums and galleries, I suggest that we go to our local gallery and ask them to chose one painting. Just one. Chose one that’s out of copyright and that’s not even currently on display – it all lowers the barriers to their participation. Find the curator who is most interested in Wikipedia – they will be your charismatic leader – because you can be sure that not all the curators will look kindly upon you when you mention Wikipedia… Work with that person and teach them about what we can do, about the contextualisation we can bring, the audience we have, the idealism and honesty behind why we do what we do. Ask them to release a photograph of the one painting. Ask them to release any text they have written about their one painting. Don’t try and take your own photograph and writer your own text (yet). Leave the power and the decision with them. It’s their painting after all. Upload these to Wikipedia and Commons and watch the article improve (or not).

If everything goes well, then you can return and your curator will no doubt be happy to help share their experience and to start ‘converting their own tribe’. If everything doesn’t go well, it doesn’t matter so much because you have limited the damage to one painting. But what you have now built is:

  • a relationship
  • an improved article which can be used as an example
  • a ‘convert’ to the advantages of working with Wikimedia
  • an article that probably no current Wikipedian could write without the help of your expert
  • a best-practice for how similar articles can be created

I urge you to find your local gallery or museum and have lunch with a friendly curator there. Just talk with them about what can be achieved together and what potential problems there might be. It might be slow, it might not generate lots of publicity, it might only result in one article created and one photo uploaded but it will be the beginning of a relationship – and that’s what we need more of.

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A beginning

Posted on May 4, 2009 by wittylama

Thanks to the efforts of Brianna and Tawker I now have a functional website.

It is with pleasure that I can now declare that ceci EST un blog! And, since I’ll be talking almost exclusively about Wikimedia related things I’ve applied to be included in the Planet Wikimedia blog aggregator. We’ll see how that goes.

In the mean time, I’ll point you to a couple of interesting things that have popped up in the last couple of days:

  • Creative Commons have released their interim report on what people actually think “Non-Comercial” actually means. It’s a damn hard question and frankly I think CC have given themselves more trouble than it’s worth by even giving that option. Everyone you ask has a different opinion and that’s what the survey was trying to find out. Their interim report has the fascinating statistic that the vast majority of people who classify themselves as “creators” (therefore, they have published their IP online – generally in Flickr) do not consider themselves to have any copyright. Bizzare. They probably think they have to register for it. Check it out here.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation is offering a series of positions at the moment – 1 intern, 2 techies (one for running the office and one for coding the usability project’s work) and 3 for the strategic plan. Check them out here. I’m fascinated by these last three as the descriptions (and the shear fact that there will be three new staff) demonstrate the seriousness of the Foundation’s intentions with regards to this strategic plan. We’ve never had one before so there could be really interesting, and possibly unexpected, outcomes.

  • Finally, the website “Digital NZ” (the new zealand government’s “we’re on the web too” page – that’s actually really good) has a great rundown of some of the required reading that came out of the annual “Museums and the Web” conference recently. Check it out here.

That’s all for now. See you soon on Wikimedia Planet, hopefully.

Posted in copyright, museums, wikimedia foundation | Comments Off on A beginning

Ceci n’est pas un blog.

Posted on March 28, 2008 by wittylama
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