Should Copyright of Academic Works Be Abolished? - Dr_Ken writes to mention recent coverage of a Harvard Cyber-Law study on Techdirt that analyzes the uses of copyright in the academic world. Some are claiming that the applications of copyright in academia are stifling and that we should perhaps go so far as to abolish copyright in the academic world entirely. "I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
[Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters]
Anyone who's close to me knows that the subject of copyright is a subject I hold near and dear to my heart. As someone currently pursuing a PhD, this story caught my attention as being very relevant to me and my current situation.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not going to sit here slamming on copyrights, complaining that "information wants to be free", or repeat a lot of the other sheep-like musings which typically emanate from the Slashdot crowd. I understand that there is a need for copyright, and that the framers of the Constitution of the United States had a grand vision in mind when they declared the reasoning of patents and copyrights to be "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". In an inherently capitalist society, exclusive, although temporary, rights are necessary to provide an incentive to innovate.
I'm also not going to attack the concept of intellectual property as is also frequently attacked by Slashdotters. While not tangible, an idea can have value. They frequently do, as is evidenced by the fact that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued in excess of 7 million patents in its 200+ year history, and that people can and do flock to stores to purchase such items as books (Yes, they are purchasing a copy of a literary work, but were it not for the author having exclusive rights there wouldn't be much incentive for a lot of authors to write).
In addition, I'm not going to attack the typical employment agreement, requiring the assignment of patents to the employer by the employee, nor the concept of a work for hire as described in U.S. copyright law. I know full well that the reason I make the kind of money I do has a lot to do with the fact that while on the clock, I am creating ideas for my employer, and without those principles in place, the work my employer paid for would easily be able to grow legs and make its way over to the competition. Fortunately, I live and work in a state where the law forbids overreaching assignment agreements. The matter of ownership of ideas which I create while, say, contemplating life in the home office with the white ergonomic chair, clearly shouldn't belong to my employer (excepting when its a job-related idea), as I'm not on their clock when the idea was born. The allowance of such agreements is a different topic well beyond the scope of this post.
The state of copyright
As it stands right now, whoever creates a work automatically receives copyright on it subject to certain rules. Among these rules is that any work for hire, i.e., a work created by an employee in the course of his or her employment automatically belongs to the employer, rather than to the employee. This makes sense. The employer pays for the work in the form of a salary to the employee. As a result, the employer is allowed to reap the exclusive benefits otherwise reserved to the actual creator of the work.
In stark contrast to this rule, there is a growing trend among research universities to reject the rule, allowing the copyrights to works created by their academic faculty, who are in fact employees of the institution, to vest with the employee rather than with the University. Unlike the industrial situation, where copyright protects one company from competition from another company, such competition doesn't really exist in academia. Sure, there might be competition between universities to develop the next great widget, but its friendly competition which actually has the effect of advancing the state of the art. In this situation, using your competition's findings is not only accepted, it is encouraged and expected (If you've ever looked at the list of citations on a typical paper, you know what I mean). No, the goal of creating information and ideas in the world of academia is to get it out there and published, not so much so that you build a proprietary customer base on your latest and greatest features, but so that your ideas get used by other researchers (perhaps building a name for yourself in the process).
This story, and the accompanying paper, highlight a problem within the world of academia, however. In "consideration of" getting your paper published, journals typically require assignment of copyright to the publisher. A license is generally not acceptable; these publishers want the copyright for themselves. This idea goes far beyond what copyright ever intended. In no way is a paper submitted to a journal a work for hire, at least not in the sense that the journal is doing the hiring. In fact, it is also becoming more common that the author has to pay for the privilege of being published.
One poster in the Slashdot story point out a link to the American Physical Society's copyright transfer page, and FAQ. From that link:
Why should I transfer copyright to APS?
Like many other scientific publishers, the American Physical Society (APS) requires authors or their employers to provide transfer of copyright prior to publication. This permits APS to publish the article and to defend against improper use (or even theft) of the article. It also permits APS to mount the article online and to use the article in other forms or media, such as PROLA. By the APS transfer agreement, authors and their employers retain substantial rights in the work, as specified in the agreement (http://forms.aps.org/author/copytrnsfr.pdf) and discussed in this document.
Let's break this down. The APS has no need for ownership in order to publish the article, nor to defend against improper use (or even theft) of the article. For the former, a nonexclusive license is all that is necessary. For the latter, the journal's own copyright on the compilation is sufficient to protect them. Unlike a lot of students (and many professors), I actually have the resources to a) file my own copyright on my work and b) prosecute blatant infringement of said copyright. As and to posting an article online and reuse of the same, any license can be sufficiently broad to encompass those uses. No, the purpose of this assignment of ownership server exactly one purpose: revenue control. Despite the "substantial rights" specified in the agreement, the author of a paper still cannot derive his or her own income from reproducing the paper. Not only that, but the authors don't even receive royalties from the publishers in these circumstances. Come on, even with the license to the thesis that I will eventually write to get my PhD, the publisher of said thesis pays out royalties, albeit a pittance.
The situation with the journals is just plain wrong. It violates the strong academic tradition of faculty owning their work. and it just plain unethical. Abolishing the copyright is not the answer, but perhaps abolishing transfers where the only "consideration" coming back to the author is publication is the answer.
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