Beta Sprint toward enclosed open system?

Cambridge, MA — The Digital Public Library "of America"(DPLA) Steering Committee is delighted to announce today a Beta Sprint that aims to surface innovations that could play a part in the building of a digital public library. [air quotes added]

• Digital Public Library "of America": Data Sprint.
• Brief intro by John Palfrey.
• Concept Note.
• Intellectual Property Policy

Predictable comment: Why "of America"? Why not, in the spirit of truly open systems, drop the nationalizing, the proprietization, geographication, localization, domination? Why not The Digital Library, tout court?

Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA)

From the ALLIANCE FOR TAXPAYER ACCESS
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org

Washington, DC – The provosts and presidents of 27 major private and public research institutions have voiced their support for the Federal Research Public Access Act in an “Open Letter to the Higher Education Community,” released Friday by the Harvard University Provost. The Act, first introduced in the Senate last year, was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 15. The letter signals expanded support for public access to publicly funded research among the largest research institutions in the U.S.

The letter reads, in part:

“As scholars and university administrators, we are acutely aware that the present system of scholarly communication does not always serve the best interests of our institutions or the general public.

No shit, Sherlock. Got any other bright ideas?

More socialism

Congress takes another stride toward public access to researchApr 15, 2010

Fueling the growing momentum toward openness, transparency, and accessibility to publicly funded information, the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2010 (FRPAA) has been introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) and a bi-partisan host of co-sponsors. The proposed bill would. . . require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

And Project Muse and JSTOR?

Bray's specific formula for abject failure

Internet repels cheesy controls. Even controls without cheese. Don't take my word for it. Let me steal Tim Bray's:

copyright policy emphatically should not rely in any essential way on the use of technological anti-circumvention measures; such reliance is a recipe for failure.

Opener access

Wed. Aug. 26th: ... starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. Inside Google Books.

Of course, it can be difficult and costly to reproduce and transport the information that older physical books contain. Some can't afford these works. Others who might be able to afford to purchase them can't unless they can find a physical copy available for sale or loan. Some important books are so limited in quantity that one must fly around the world to find a copy. Access to other works is only available to those who attend certain universities or belong to certain organizations. Link.

Once we convert atoms from physical books into digital bits, we can begin to change some of that. (cough).

{{{Ok, I've tried opening a couple of epub files with different programs, including notepad - nuthin' but code. Suggestions, kind readers?}}}

Tim O'Reilly on ePub

O'Reilly also tweeted these efforts to make more US Government data accessible and fluid:

DataMasher Mash up state data

This We Know US Gov't data about communities.

govpulse the federal register, beautifully organized.

Healthcare in nations that don't perpetrate fraud upon their citizens

If you're a Native American or a veteran you live in Britain. They get government health care and government hospitals from government doctors and they never get a bill.

If you're an employed person sharing your health insurance premium with your employer, you live in Germany. That's the Bismarck model that was invented in Germany and used in many countries.

If you're a senior and you buy Medicare insurance from the government and go to private doctors, you live in Canada. That's the Canadian model. As a matter of fact, the Canadian health care system is called Medicare, and when Lyndon Johnson provided it for our seniors in 1965 he borrowed both the model and the name from Canada.

And if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who can't get health insurance, well, you live in Malawi or Madagascar or Mali or something...

A clarifying look at healthcare systems.

Get the short version here (NPR interview) or here (transcript of same).

Also: 5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

add: Another Interview with Reid: Sick Around the World

"This is a brutal system..."

Compliments of the public good

via Gracchi

There is a worrying trend in which the resources that you can use to do proper scholarship are falling behind subscription curtains - JSTOR, EEBO, the RHS bibliography- are all beyond access for members of the general public to inspect. I don't like this because I think scholarship should be open to access to everyone and I also think that if it isn't there are risks - there are risks to making access to knowledge conditional on holding an institutional subscription (step forward JSTOR) - I understand that there has to be an economic model to support such things - but on the other hand there is a complementary public good, that access to knowledge ought to be free.

Whether you call them academics or priests, exclusive castes who dominate access to knowledge are not healthy for society and the internet ought to be about opening knowledge to everyone- not just to those with a university login.

[Added later:] A glimpse into how one academic library (Hanover College's Duggan Library) values JSTOR:

In 2008, the Duggan Library subscribed to a total of 825 (and still growing) archived titles covering almost 26 million pages of content. This represents 6, 300 linear feet of shelf space. To put that last number in perspective, just imagine all of the periodical shelving behind the reference desk/collection on the first floor.

During the year there were more than 22,000 searches performed, and more than 62,000 viewed pages, with 4,857 full text articles downloaded representing about 5 downloaded articles per student FTE. Based on the cost of our combined JSTOR subscriptions we paid the equivalent of $1.84 per article. Compare this to customary interlibrary loan article fees of $10 to $20 and it is easy to see that we are certainly getting a good return on investment while helping ensure that our users are getting the academic support they require.

Comment: More data like this could lead to a sense of what might be a fair pricing mechanism for open, worldwide micropayment access to JSTOR. It would also be helpful to know how many people attempt to access information hiding behind JSTOR's walls, who are blocked, and how many have somehow hacked in.

My guess is that when all these numbers are brought into relation, we're looking at a low, eminently affordable micropayment scheme that would bring in revenue to JSTOR and its ilk, and permit everyone to use the research which it now wrongly hoards.

Withholding knowledge is also power

via INSIDE Higher Ed:

JSTOR -- which until now has been a repository for back issues of nearly 800 journals -- will, beginning in 2011, provide current content from the 50-plus journals that the UC Press publishes, meshing the new releases seamlessly with the journals' back files and primary content from libraries increasingly found on JSTOR. ...

...libraries would buy access to both current and archival journals in a single transaction, though the pricing models would be different. Users would continue to pay for JSTOR's archival material in roughly the same way they do now, paying for collections of journals at prices set by JSTOR, but publishers will set their own prices for the current journals, which while provided through JSTOR will be clearly branded by journal and publisher.

SIGH

"The important issue here is whether or not other publishers will get on board with the UC Press," Steven J. Bell, associate university librarian for research & instructional services at Temple University, said in an e-mail message. "As they say, this agreement could be a 'game changer,' but not if the other publishers don’t buy in to the change."

"Aren't we at a point where we should be moving forward more to integrate monograph with journal content online, rather than allowing this new 'digital divide' to grow even further?" ...

[Oh yes - the digital divide.]

"It would be a natural extension of this platform to have that content. Eventually, it won't matter what the traditional carrier was -- it will be 'content,' in a variety of presentations, that represents the whole scope of the research endeavor."

JSTOR's method of digitally packaging academic knowledge seems to be maturing into a richer model. What's unclear is why the expansion of "content" is not yet matched by similar efforts to broaden audience access. Why not set as a goal the chance for anyone, anywhere to access articles for minimal micropayments? Or is that not within "the whole scope of the research endeavor." What's the down side of sharing knowledge?

Open: for business

This is basically more added to this.

Belatedly:

The FCC released a Notice of Inquiry on developing a national broadband plan that will seek to ensure that every American has access to broadband capability. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 requires the FCC to create a national broadband plan and to deliver it to Congress by Feb. 17, 2010. The FCC seeks comment on the most effective and efficient ways to ensure broadband access for all Americans, strategies for achieving affordability and maximum utilization of broadband infrastructure and services, evaluation of the status of broadband deployment, and how to use broadband to advance consumer welfare, public safety and other national purposes. link

Comment at Listics:

In crafting the national broadband plan, the Federal Communications Commission must protect Internet users from corporate gatekeepers who seek to keep prices high and speeds slow, limit access to content and stifle innovations and market choice.

Broadband Opportunities for Rural America

FCC develops strategy for rural broadband

Rural broadband vs. red tape "Fortune"

The biz publications (e.g., "Fortune") always have these stories depicting federal efforts as squabbling, lacking in determined, forthright action. They usually downplay the complexities, the ethical elements that enter a host of decisions, definitions, and planning exigencies.

It's a tried and true USian way to side-step the difficulties inherent in capital expenditures that attempt to implement equitable policies - such as open access to the Net. We are a closed business world masquerading as an open society.

Access is the moment in Capitalism at which fake scarcities, exorbitant overcharges, massive profiteering, failures of cooperation, and mere business-as-usual enter the system. Healthcare, Internet Service Provision, and Open Access Publishing all suffer from the failure to adequately articulate the justifications for public access.

Incidentally, the Internet itself was a hack - how did corporations end up controlling it?

Fuck the piper (an immodest proposal)

Google Inc. (GOOG 429.53, -13.07, -2.95%) on Thursday said its second-quarter net income rose to $1.48 billion, or $4.66 a share, from $1.25 billion, or $3.92 a share in the same period a year earlier. Net revenue in the period ended in June rose to $4.07 billion from $3.9 billion, Google said. Excluding special items, earnings were $5.36 a share. Wall Street analysts had expected Google to post earnings excluding special items of $5.09 a share, and $4.06 billion in net revenue, according to data from Thomson Reuters. #

I'm not understanding why everyone thinks Google is brilliant but no one seems to grok the model.

It would be edifying to know how many stories at the NY Times site have been clicked on by users (or by bots) over the past decade, if that's how long they've been available. Must be in the hundreds of millions. Let's say 300 million [add: that's way low - see here]. Had they charged $.007 per story accession (i.e., click), the Times would have made $2.1 million. That's $2.1 million more than the ZERO their content has earned for them thus far (offset by whatever grand total their short-lived scheme of charging for Rich, Dowd, etc. brought in).

But who would agree to pay them even $.007 per access? you fairly ask. And my model says - it doesn't matter. Because the money would not come directly from the end user's pocket, but rather from those funds spent by all of us to all the large corpses who bring bits into the home, by whatever means - Comcast, Verizon, etc. Because these companies right now are thieves. They are making money hand over fist from users. But users do not pay them in order to see dark screens (that bliss is for television). We pay the Comcasts and Verizons in order to access content. Their mega-earnings are contingent upon their parasitism of Content.

Does it not seem appropriate that the pipers pay for that which enables them to exist? I have put forth this model before, (also a bit here) and of course it's patently absurd. However, I assure you, it's the only fair way to make sure that there is quality content on the Net. As of now, that assurance is lacking. The black holes of internet service providers are threatening to suck down all the light. They are making vast profit while thinking only about metal and fiber and trucks. All of those who are trying at least to think, to tweet, to make something or do something or read something, sit atop an enormous pile of bupkis. This is wrong.

The only fair way is to let every click on the net - to anything, except closed sub sites (like JSTOR), and sites featuring socially challenged content (bestiality, child porn, Republican Senators) - move a bit of micromoney from piper (a general fund fed from all pipers) to contenter. And, the same amount. Equal bits. Let's not quibble over how much more quality one finds in the NY Times. You provide content, you get clicked on, you get the everybody micro$, period.

This in no way obviates Big or Small Content from selling ads or running contests or selling t-shirts. It is simply the addition of a revenue stream that wasn't there before, taken from the profits of Big Pipes. You know the gold is there.

My argument would be improved by containing actual numbers of clicks for some content providers. But I don't think it would change the underlying logic. Please now tell me why I'm wrong so I can remove this chimera from my skull.



[Update] from the Man who Knows Everything:

Free is for the masses; the elite will pay for high quality content in news, information, education and entertainment. Digital feudalism...8 minutes ago from TweetDeck

ajkeen

Andrew Keen

Thanks!

Like an alien object found inexplicably sitting in open view, here's an excellent piece by Nino Pirrotta on Commedia dell'Arte and Opera. Pirrotta was a brilliant fellow, and whoever took the trouble to spring his work, which by "rights" should be imprisoned within J$TOR's Big House (and probably will be along with the perp if his considerate J$TORlift is noticed by the authorities) deserves our thanks.

Ach, du Lieberman

FRPAA, public access mandate, re-introduced in U.S. Senate

Senator John Cornyn, Sens. Cornyn & Lieberman Team Up To Increase Public Access To Taxpayer Funded Research, press release, June 25, 2009.

See also: http://www.openoasis.org/

recursive publics and free software

From an interesting review of an interesting-sounding book by Christopher Kelty:

Kelty’s main argument is that Free Software communities are a recursive public. He defines a recursive public as a public “whose existence (which consists solely in address through discourse) is possible only through discursive and technical reference to the means of creating this public.”

and

Free Software is a continuing praxis of “figuring out” - giving up an understanding of finality in order to continually adapt and redesign the system.

I recently wrote a piece for a multiply-authored book due out next year (more on this later) that sought to look at the "development" of the Internet very much along these lines. I hadn't seen these lines when I wrote it, but yes this, and the notion of “adaptability over planning” seem to me germane to the open system of the Net.

I do suspect "open system" is often oxymoronal. Maybe not always?

And, slantwise, this:

The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels.

Hackers + Kindle = Open System?

Soy un Asco ponders the love/hate syndrome that is JSTOR, and dreams of unlimited access through Kindle.

So kack your Hindle.

Ach Ja, Die Stoffe ist der Geist

Sigh

"Intellectual property has to be just as protected as material property. All creativity will be destroyed if you have a mentality that everything should be free."

The Good German Parliamentarian ist soooo richtig. The elan vital of lobbyists, middlemen, advertising yeggs, their bartenders and valets could seriously be impaired by the dissolution of their host.

Towering Germanic intellects such as these might benefit from a talk with Steve Albini.

Update: The problem with music - dead link on textism.

Oh the humanities

Technology and changing habits have called into question the nature of the traditional humanities journal — a printed assembly of peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and notes and queries offered by subscription. "What we shared until recently was a sense that the academic journal appeared between covers as a deliberately constructed series of articles, sometimes on a common theme," Ms. Wheeler observed.

A journal started today, however, is likely to be online-only and open access [hanh?]. And more and more readers now discover bits and pieces of any journal's content — an article here, a book review there — through electronic databases and aggregators like

JStor, Project Muse, and Ebsco.

Editors of well-established humanities journals have mixed feelings about the changes.

More readers, more dollars: That makes editors happy. But they worry about how to carry the idea of a journal as an organized whole over into the digital world. "The journal itself becomes invisible to the end-user," Ms. Wheeler told her audience. Even as access to its content increases, "the identity of the journal is often lost."

"It's hard for me to imagine The Journal of American History becoming entirely digital anytime in the near future." — Edward T. Linenthal, editor

Press, release

Open Access Week declared for 2009
Popular global event extended over one week, October 19 – 23

Washington, DC – March 5, 2009 – To accommodate widespread global interest in the movement toward Open Access to scholarly research results, October 19 – 23, 2009 will mark the first international Open Access Week. The now-annual event, expanded from one day to a full week, presents an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public.

Open Access Week builds on the momentum generated by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. Event organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture welcome key new contributors, who will help to enhance and expand the global reach of this popular event in 2009: eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); and the Open Access Directory (OAD).

“I’m participating in Open Access Week again this year because I want to shed light on the tremendous potential of Open Access,” said Allyson Mower, Scholarly Communications & Copyright Librarian for the University of Utah’s Marriott Library. “People searching for information usually consume whatever is readily available. Open Access ensures that quality information is at people’s fingertips.”

“eIFL.net works to make intellectual outputs of developing and transitional countries more visible and more easily accessible,” added Rima Kupryte, Director of eIFL.net. “We believe that Open Access contributes to improved education, teaching, and research, and accelerates innovations and economical developments in these countries. Open Access Week is a great opportunity to promote Open Access globally.”

This year’s program will highlight educational resources on Open Access that local hosts can use to customize their own programs to suit local audiences and time zones. OASIS will serve as the centerpiece of the 2009 program, delivering resources for every constituency and every awareness level. The Open Access Directory will again provide an index of participants on five continents, as well as their growing clearinghouse for all OA resources. Through the collaborative functionality of the two initiatives, OA videos, briefing papers, podcasts, slideshows, posters and other informative tools will be drawn from all over the Web to be highlighted during Open Access Week.

The organizers will also work with registrants to develop a variety of sample program tracks, such as “Administrators’ introduction to campus open-access policies and funds,” “OA 101,” and “Complying with the NIH public access policy” that take full advantage of available tools. Participants are invited to adapt these resources for local use, and to mark Open Access Week by hosting an event, distributing literature, blogging -- or even just wearing an Open Access t-shirt.

“After the success of last year’s Open Access Day, we’re delighted to be co-organizing the first ever Open Access Week with our fellow collaborators, again in conjunction with the anniversary of one of our flagship journals,” said Peter Jerram, CEO for the Public Library of Science. “We ask our supporters to celebrate the fifth anniversary of PLoS Medicine by spreading the word about Open Access and getting involved in the week.”

“There’s no more certain sign of the momentum behind Open Access to research than an annual, global celebration of this scale,” added Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. “Occasions like this are the best possible way to attract attention from busy faculty members and administrators, and to demonstrate the widespread appeal of Open Access. It’s SPARC’s pleasure to be working with our partners to realize the event once again this year.”

For more information about Open Access Week and to register, visit http://www.openaccessweek.org.

Open systems: Medpedia

In an email, Alan Herrell points to Medpedia:

Welcome to Medpedia

Medpedia is just getting started. It is a long term project and is not yet a comprehensive resource. See what is already available and how you can add to it.

Medpedia is applying a new collaborative model to the collection, sharing and advancement of medical knowledge that, over time, will produce the world's most comprehensive resource.

GOOG pwns Prado

The fusion of art, engineering, science, glamour, Las Meninas, enlightenment, GoogleEarth, godlike geekdom. So, worry less than if this were another of Bill Gates's capture-rapture-tastic enterprises?

via

Berkman seeks permission to crawl crypts

A team from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society has requested an exemption that, in the event that a central-server based DRM scheme fails in the future, would permit consumers to circumvent and evade the DRM protecting the music, movies, software and games that they have previously purchased -- in order to maintain their existing lawful right to access those works.

Wake me when they request the DRM except itself from operational existence. More at JOHO.