"Information wants to be free" is widely attributed to the futurist Stewart Brand, who spoke at a Hackers Conference which he helped organize in 1984:
"'On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life.'
'On the other hand,' he went on, 'information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other'" (as cited in Lai, 2009).
The constant tension between information being expensive and free makes the online world a challenging one to understand and navigate.
Some questions to ask:
What are the rights and responsibilities of the producers of information? It may take money and time to package information into a format that is accessible to users. How well should the producers be compensated for that work?
When is it appropriate to pay for information, and when is it not? Is all information always free? Should it be? What are our rights and responsibilities as information consumers?
The following chapters examine some of the ways information is being made more freely available, such as Open Access and Creative Commons. We consider the cost of online information and the importance of Net Neutrality. We briefly look at activism and hacktivism which fight perceived excesses in government and industry control of information.
The Moodle booklet "The Internet is Broken" examines in more detail the ways in which information is considered expensive and what can happen when it is viewed this way.
We briefly examine the very complex issues of surveillance and privacy online - because advertisers and governments have discovered that the value of our personal data surpasses that of the information we want to access.
Lai, J. (2009, July 20). Information wants to be free ... and expensive. Retrieved July 3, 2016 from http://fortune.com/2009/07/20/information-wants-to-be-free-and-expensive/?iid=leftrail
Open access (OA) is the free, online availability of scholarly journal articles, including peer-reviewed materials, and primarily in reference to those which authors publish without expectation of payment.
Open Access can refer to publishing initiatives where journals make their articles freely accessible immediately on publication, or to self-archiving initiatives where authors make copies of their own published articles freely accessible via a subject-based or institutional repository.
According to SHERPA / RoMEO over 90% of peer-reviewed journals have endorsed some form of self-archiving.
These directories can be used to help discover OA publications:
Center for Open Education. (n.d.). Open textbook library. Retrieved July 1, 2016 from http://open.umn.edu/openTextbooks/
OER Commons. (2016). What are OER? Retrieved July 1, 2016 from https://www.oercommons.org/about
What is Creative Commons and why should I use it?
Creative Commons is a form of licensing that bridges the gap between "all rights reserved" copyright and public domain. It allows creators let others easily use their work under specific conditions while retaining copyright and credit. For works that are not expressly marked Creative Commons, you must follow the legal requirements of the Copyright Act.
*Note the closed-captioning on this video is auto-generated and thus inaccurate. But we liked the content so much we had to use it! For your convenience, the transcript of the video is available below.
Creative Commons. (2007, April 10). Get creative: Being the origin and adventures of the creative commons licensing project [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/io3BrAQl3so
Definition:
"A work in the public domain is free for everyone to use without permission or paying royalities. The phrase 'public domain' is a copyright term referring to works that belong to the public.
Works can be in the public domain for a variety of reasons: because the term of copyright protection has expired; because the work was not eligible for copyright in the first place; or because the copyright owner has given the copyright in the work to the public. "
Source: Wanda Noel Copyright Guide for Canadian Libraries. Canadian Library Association 1999, p.15.
Term of Copyright in Canadian Law:
Section 6 of the Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42) : "The term for which copyright shall subsist, shall, except as otherwise expressively provided by this Act, be the life of the author, the remainder of the calendar year in which the author dies, and a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year."
Copyright law is national in application, i.e. limited to the nation that enacts it. It is important to note that Canadian citizens follow the Copyright Act of Canada, no matter the national origin of the material.
Works Not Eligible for Copyright Protection:
It is important to note that material on the Internet is not public domain just because it is online and available to the public. Even though it's easy to find and copy, the material on the Internet is equally protected under copyright, or usage terms and conditions. Always read the terms of use on Internet sites.
Remember: Public domain exists when copyright expires. This means public domain is defined through copyright law in Canada and elsewhere. Laws may differ according to country so it's important to check whether the material you are using is public domain.
In Canada, materials are typically in the public domain (copyright expires) 50 years after the death of the creator. As of June 2016 Parliament is reviewing a private member's bill - Bill C-299 An Act to Amend the Copyright Act (term of copyright) which seeks to extend the copyright on musical works to 70 years after the death of the creator. It has received first reading in the House of Commons.
UBC's Walter Koerner Library maintains a very thorough guide to Public Domain.
Pond5. (2015, January 20). Public domain 101 [Video file]. Retrieved July 2, 2016 from https://youtu.be/Nc3Dnh2JCMI
January 1st we celebrate Public Domain Day when another group of authors' works enter the public domain where anyone may use, republish, translate, transform or copy them into digital archives.
For Canada , a " life + 50 years" country, we are able to celebrate the public domain status of works by authors like William Faulkner who died in 1962.
In the United Kingdom and most other countries of the European Union, Public Domain Day celebrates works by authors who died in 1942. These are countries which are party to the European Union Copyright Duration Directive (1993) which retroactively required them to extend their copyright terms from the Berne Convention's "life + 50 years" to "life + 70 years" and by doing so put 20 years' worth of public domain works back into copyright.
In the United States currently, most (but not all) works published before 1923 are now in the public domain. No authors' published works entered the public domain in 2013 and none will enter until January 1, 2019. Why ? In 1998 the United States extended copyright protection by 20 years from 75 to 95 years under the so-called Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Works published from 1923 now have a 95 year term.
Source of images:
Van Vechten C. (1954). William Faulkner, December 1954. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. Carl Van Vechten Collection. [image]. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/van/
Sonny Bono. Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives. [image]. (n.d.) Retrieved February 12, 2013 from http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=b000622
Net neutrality is "the principle that individuals should be free to access all content and applications equally, regardless of the source, without Internet service providers discriminating against specific online services or websites. In other words, it is the principle that the company that connects you to the internet does not get to control what you do on the internet" (Public Knowledge, 2016, para. 1 [emphasis added]).
In April 2017, The CRTC ruled that "[internet] service providers should treat data traffic equally to foster consumer choice, innovation and the free exchange of ideas". The CRTC ruling originated from complaints against Quebec-based provider Videotron's unlimited music streaming service, which launched in 2015. The service allowed streaming of content from partner companies to be exempt from data charges. Content from competing music companies would continue to count against customer data plans. This practice is also known as 'zero rating' or 'sponsored data'. The CRTC has launched a new framework for evaluating differential pricing schemes to prevent charges based on the type of content streamed.
In 2017, The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to roll back net neutrality protections installed during the Obama presidency.
Brodkin, J. (2017, April 21). As US prepares to gut net neutrality rules, Canada strengthens them. Ars Technica. Retrieved from https://arstechnica.com
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, (2017, April 20). Strengthening net neutrality in Canada. Retrieved from http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/internet/diff.htm
Fiegerman, S. (2017, May 18). FCC votes to move forward with net neutrality rollback. CNN Tech. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com
Public Knowledge. (2016). Net neutrality. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from https://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/net-neutrality
Ruiz, R.R., & Lohr, S. (2015, February 26). F.C.C. approves net neutrality, classifying broadband internet services as a utility. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com
The issues of equitable access to information and individual online freedoms have a long history of both activism and hacktivism.
Activism is "the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc." (dictionary.com). There are numerous activist organizations that have information access as their mandate. We will describe the activities of two such organizations: OpenMedia and EFF.
Hacktivism is "the practice of gaining unauthorized access to a computer system and carrying out various disruptive actions as a means of achieving political or social goals" (dictionary.com). We will introduce you to hacktivist Aaron Swartz, and what he did to become a renowned (and notorious) hacktivist. His extreme actions reached their highest point in 2011, two years before his death. By contrast, Julian Assange has been a hacktivist of considerable impact since 2006, when he founded WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is a site dedicated to publishing secret government documents online. Since 2012, Julian Assange has lived in exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
OpenMedia is a Canadian Internet activist organization which has as its core mission the following Internet rights:
OpenMedia. (n.d.). What's OpenMedia? Retrieved July 4, 2016 from https://openmedia.org/en/ca/about
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a US organization which defends "civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. We work to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows" (Electronic Frontier Foundation, n.d., para. 1).
EFF is an important organization in the protection of individual rights and freedoms around the world in the digital era. Their work centers around 5 central themes:
Read more about each of these issues at https://www.eff.org/issues
Electronic Frontier Foundation. (n.d. a). About EFF. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from https://www.eff.org/about
Aaron Swartz was "an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist" ("Aaron Swartz," 2016, para. 1) whose life's work centered on the notion that "Information Should be Free" and he took that idea to extremes. There are opposing views whether he was a freedom fighter or a criminal, but there is no doubt that his life and work continue to affect the information landscape in North America.
Timeline of Aaron Swartz's life, excerpted from Amsden (2013):
“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.” The manifesto ends with “We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world.” (para. 30)
What do you think? Was Aaron Swartz justified in his actions? Or did he deserve to be prosecuted?
Aaron Swartz. (2016, July 3). In Wikipedia. Retrieved July 3, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
Amsden, D. (2013, February 28). The brilliant life and tragic death of Aaron Swartz. Rolling Stone, 1177. Retrieved fromhttp://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-brilliant-life-and-tragic-death-of-aaron-swartz-20130215?page=4
WikiLeaks is "a multi-national media organization and associated library. It was founded by its publisher Julian Assange in 2006.
WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying, and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses" (WikiLeaks, 2015, paras. 1-2 [emphasis added]).
When it was founded in 2006, WikiLeaks's first document released was "a 'secret decision,' signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali rebel leader for the Islamic Courts Union...[which]called for the execution of government officials by hiring “criminals” as hit men" (Khatchadourian, 2010, para. 80).
In 2010 WikiLeaks "engaged in its most famous publications to date, revealing the systematic abuse of official secrecy within the US military and government" (Assange, 2014, p. 205).
In Julian Assange's famous 2011 interview with Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, he spoke eloquently about some of the guiding principles behind WikiLeaks.
"All around the world there are people observing different parts of what is happening to them locally. And there are other people that are receiving information that they haven't observed first-hand. In the middle, there are people who are involved in moving information from the observers to the people who will act on information. These are three separate problems that are all tied together.
I felt that there was a difficulty in taking observations and, in an efficient way, putting them into a distribution system which could then get this information to people who would act upon it. You can argue that companies like Google, for example, are involved in the 'middle' business of moving information from people who have it to people who want it. The problem I saw was that this first step was crippled, and often the last step was as well, when it came to information that governments were inclined to censor" (Assange, 2014, p. 68).
Assange, J. (2014). When Google met WikiLeaks. New York: OR Books.
Khatchadourian, R. (2010, June 7). No secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://newyorker.com
WikiLeaks. (2015, November 3). What is WikiLeaks. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from https://wikileaks.org/What-is-Wikileaks.html