ugasser - May 24, 2005 @ 8:17 am
· freedom of expression, open access, policy, privacy
EDRI-gram provides an overview of the Declaration on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in the Information Society that has recently been adopted by the the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers (see also press release.) The author of the EDRI-gram report concludes:
“… from a digital civil rights point of view, on close reading the declaration doesn’t offer any specific new rights to internet users when it comes to privacy, freedom of speech and access to knowledge. Though these rights and freedoms are all mentioned and reaffirmed repeatedly in the declaration, they are balanced against ‘challenges’ posed by the Internet, such as violation of intellectual property rights, access to illegal and harmful content and “circumstances that lead to the adoption of measures to curtail the exercise of human rights in the Information Society in the context of law enforcement or the fight against terrorism.”
ugasser - May 12, 2005 @ 9:51 am
· open access, scientific publishing
A news report in The Register draws our attention to a fascinating Dutch open A2K project called DAREnet, a joint venture by Dutch universities, the National Library of the Netherlands, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. On the website (currently suffering from too much attention), scientists from all major Dutch universities make their research materials – currently 47,000 digital documents – freely accessible to the research community and the public at large. The article in the Register also notes that commercial publishers are note amused. No surprise, indeed.
ugasser - April 15, 2005 @ 9:01 am
· creative commons, open access
The Creative Archive License has been launched. Press release here, and a backgrounder on BBC’s public domain archive project here.
ugasser - January 8, 2005 @ 2:57 am
· consumer protection, copyright, digital products, diversity, DRM, e-commerce, entrepreneurship, futurology, innovation, IPR enforcement, iTunes, long tail, open access, peer collaboration, policy, TPM, user creativity, web 2.0
The Berkman Center’s Digital Media Project team has released an in-depth analysis of the impacts of policy choises on emerging business models in the music and film industries. Here’s the link to the paper and the abstract:
The online environment and new digital technologies threaten the viability of the music and film industries’ traditional business models. The industries have responded by seeking government intervention, among other means, to protect their traditional models as well as by developing new models specifically adapted to the online market. Industry activity and public debate have focused on three key policy areas related to copyright holders’ control of content: technical interference with and potential liability of P2P services; copyright infringers’ civil and criminal liability; and legal reinforcement of digital rights management technologies (DRM).
This paper seeks to support policymakers’ decision making by delineating the potential consequences of policy actions in these areas. To do so, it assesses how such action would impact relevant social values and four business models representative of current and emerging attempts to generate viable revenues from digital media. The authors caution that government intervention is currently premature because it is unlikely to strike an appropriate balance between achieving industry goals while supporting other social values, such as consumer rights, the diversity of available content, and technological innovation.
Special thanks — and congratulations — to Derek Slater and Meg Smith of the Berkman team for their work.
