Philip Dorrell, Published Digital Information is a Public Good: The Case for Voted Compensation, March 2, 2005. An argument for OA to both royalty-free and royalty-producing content. Excerpt: 'This paper is a call for reform. There needs to be more awareness of what is wrong with the prohibition-based intellectual property system that the world has imposed upon itself, and how much we all lose if we fail to consider more effective alternatives. In summary: [1] Published digital information is a public good. [2] Existing intellectual property law treats published digital information as a private good, which it isn't. [3] This error results in a self-imposed "information poverty", in the midst of plenty. [4] We have decided to impose this poverty on ourselves (via our democratically elected governments), for our "own good", so that content creators can get paid. [5] Actually, we could just directly decide to pay the creators, without the self-imposed poverty. [6] Voted Compensation is a practical means of introducing a system for paying the creators of content in a manner which is no longer linked to the prohibition of copying, distributing or re-using that content. [7] Although there are various problems that could arise in the implementation of such a system, they are probably much less serious than the problems already occurring in the current system of copyright (and patents), and we should all start thinking about how a practical alternative compensation system could be implemented.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/28/2005 09:15:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
