Legal and policy issues cluster session 2006-03-27
From DigiRepWiki
Tuesday 28th March
0915-1100
Objective: to identify synergies and gaps between activities within/beyond programme, and identify clear areas where coordination / collaboration would be useful, or where additional work could be valuable.
0915-1000: 5 minutes each from TrustDR, GRADE, Rights & Rewards, VERSIONS, EThOS. General discussion.
1000-1030: Focus on Rights Enforcement: from rights recognition through to controlling access. Input, then collecting scenarios and identifying key issues
1030-1100: Updates from IPR consultancy
1130-1230
Objective: to make plans for working together (summarised on a ppt for presentation to the plenary session)
1130-1200: Identify topics (those above? others?)
1200-1230: Identify methods (meetings? exchange of draft documents? peer evaluation? other?)
External Invitees
Naomi Korn, IPR Consultancy Session Leader
JORUM
Notes from the Meeting
Project Updates
Rights & Rewards – Steve Loddington.
SL gave a presentation and made some leaflets/handouts available. Rights and rewards builds on the ROMEO project, they have carried out a digital lifecycle exercise and are currently looking at a workflow mapping exercise. SL presented a summary of the IPR Survey findings which will be made available at the project website shortly. Issues raised included: File formats and metadata, Discipline and community specific metadata and metadata priorities for different groups using different data. StORe will be making some information available in this area in June. A point was raised about the survey results and it was noted than in some cases they would have been completed by enthusiasts and therefore ‘not wanting to share’ may not be coming through as a barrier. Work with LionShare raised the issue of quality in the motivation to share in that the quality would either be too good or not good enough and both can be seen as barriers.
TrustDR – John Casey.
TrustDR is focusing on pragmatic and practical solutions to rights and legal issues for learning objects and repositories. Outputs may include recommendations on licences that are available, pointing to off the shelf licences for particular purposes and to develop packs for staff and institutions tackling the softer issues. Institutions will hopefully benefit form these outputs and not reinvent the wheel. A key area of activity for TrustDR is to look at value and ownership from the perspective of different stakeholders and to provide guidance on how we may address this. They are also looking at organisations such as the AUA and Oxford Legal to get information on policies and procedures and closely examining other work such as Creative Commons and the work carried out by Jorum. Issues raised included: It’s not just technical and issues of law here, it includes softer issues that involve cultural, social and human factors as well. There is a great deal of confusion at the moment and its to easy to get bogged down in technicalities, this is making individuals detached from the reality of their position and this needs to be dealt with. Notice and takedown procedures were discussed and the Jorum representative agreed to make their work in this area available at the programme wiki. Notice and takedown has implications for other areas of repository activity including workflow, usage data etc and needs to be considered in the wider context. It was agreed that a pool of case studies, stories and exemplars needs to be aquired and reviewed by this cluster. Cost of clearance of materials was also raised and specifically the example of print material being cheaper to clear than multimedia. In fact it’s may be other way round as finding original authors of print can be difficult, time consuming and therefore costly. All agreed that sharing findings between all would be a good and that the cluster could act as a review point.
Grade – .
Rebecca gave an overview of the project which is focusing on sharing geo-spatial data. Within this project there is a strong emphasis on copyright law and how restrictive this can be in dealing with geo-spatial data, It is not easy to reuse this sort of data. Issues raised included: A similar issue had recently arose in the European Court of Justice regarding source data and that OS could probably be challenged on this as they may not have as many rights as they think in the source data. The current OS line is probably based on history rather than law. It was agreed that JISC should be made aware of these sorts of issues, it should be raised with Rachel Bruce and Malcolm Reid. Perhaps a model for sharing this sort of data within UK educational Institutions could be looked at, with JISC’s assistance?
ETHOS – Hywel Williams.
ETHOS have a specific work package look at digital rights and e-thesis and issues that this raises such as IPR versus the FOI act, royalty payments, publishing, data confidentiality etc. Discussion is being held with the AUA (Association of University Administration) about policy. There is also a need to have an academic registrar on side as an advocate and this was raised as a critical issue. Issues raised included: Web publishing raises the same complications as traditional publishing, they are one and the same Data confidentiality is a big problem due to the high profile of this materials once its on the web This raised some discussion about what financial risks there are and it was agreed that not all risks are directly financial but can also be more indirect for example with regard to deformation and individual reputations etc
Versions – Frances Shipsey.
The project is focusing on versions in Economics prints for publication and has a European element to it as well. An area that is being looked at is are version barriers to publication and sharing? Specific activities are looking at terminology for version identification, other ways of describing differences between version, for example comparing text. Issues raised included: It was agreed that many of these issues already raised in other updates were significant for this project and due to this overlap there is a need to continue to collaborate.
Updates from IPR consultancy
Naomi Korn and Charles Oppenhiem.
This is a 2 year consultancy ongoing until 2007, internal to JISC and supporting projects/programmes and producing reports and news letters for JISC staff. JISC legal differs in that it’s a front end advisory service that is proactive and reactive to user queries. There are 3 consultants that include Naomi Korn, Charles Oppenhiem, and Sol Picciotto listed here in order of the proportion of time allocated to this work respectively. NK gave an overview presentation and thanked others including John Casey for their invaluable contributions in this area of work, some of which were reflected in this presentation - see slides for more information. A brief discussion was held about ITTs that were raised during the presentation including one for the development of guidance on model licences and another focusing on support and guidance for the user of DRELs
Activity - Debate Contracts and Trust
Woking in small groups the following statement was discussed from a variety of angles representing the different areas of participation from the group’s members: “Enforcing contracts is not always possible, so the use, access and contribution of material to repositories will often require varying levels of trust and other methods” Summary of issue raised: It was felt that ‘practical’ was more of an issue than ‘possible’ in this statement particularly from the perspective of enforcement and questions were raised about methods of enforcement. It was agreed that there are trusted communities that have procedures and conventions and that this would help, for example citation is established practice in many communities already. The social, cultural, human and organisational issues were all important aspects raised during this discussion. It was clarified that a preset framework for copyright law is applied to resources at the point of conception and through the full lifecycle of the resource. The extent to which violations of contacts should be perused was raised and it was agreed that minor violations would probably go unpunished There is a need to focus on champions for IPR and we need to Lobby organisations such as the AUA for assistance with policy and procedure development. Language used is contacts and agreements is also a very important issue. It was felt that initiatives focusing on polices, procedures, increasing awareness, staff training, changing attitudes and cultures would help reduce the need to focus on enforcement and rather build on trusted relationships instead. There are distinct communities, different interpretations, issues with use, access and contribution and indeed with the range of repository implementations. All of these factors complicate the picture regarding agreements and contracts. Methods of enforcement could be less direct and include a ‘benefits and rewards/penalties’ approach. Penalties could for example include peer exclusions.
Agreed Actions from the Cluster Meeting
The group agreed that the cluster was a useful forum and that all participants have benefited from sharing experience in today’s session. It was agreed that in moving forward with this cluster:
• Would like new projects to join: As new projects come on board within the programme, representation on this cluster should be sought for them as well, were applicable;
• Would like a cycle of meetings: Regular meetings should be held to enable all participants to exchange ideas, update the other projects etc;
• Opportunities to testbed ideas, share experience, identify future work
• Fully write-up discussions such as those we had today
• Share resources and information on the programme wiki
• Might need a coordinator role or secretarial support
Feedback session to other clusters
Key issues reported back to the other cluster groups – Commonalities between projects: they are diverse, taking different approaches – Communities and media types we’re dealing with are affecting the way we approach rights – Is diversity of approach good? – Communities are having to talk to each other, address overlaps and differences and find solutions – It’s inevitable and it’s healthy – We can’t have a single solution, there’s no single “right approach” … yet? – Its important to understand underlying processes and systems: communication, IT …
