"There's Evian, then there's tap water"

"I've always felt that personal use (ie among you, your family and friends) should be totally unrestricted". Thomas Dolby 2007

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Some interesting recent discussions about "Fair Use" in the blogosphere.





Also see this post on the i9606 blog and Paper Chase by Craig Powell over at Nature Network.

These and other similar discussions will continue. The stark reality however with regards to p2p file sharing in terms of PDF's is that this has been happening for years and in my own experience, 90% of Authors that I contact seeking a copy of a PDF results in the file being shared. IMHO, services such as Mendeley provide a means to an end to do this (as in sharing PDF's) in a much more structed manner.



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One of McDawg's musical hero's, Thomas Dolby thoughts about "Fair Use" in terms of music can be found here on his blog:-

Posted 2/15/2007
Q: Thomas,
The ubiquitous mix tape (well, the mix CD now.) It's a staple of fledgling romances all over the planet. People mix up music from their collections, make a compilation, and send it off as a token of love, affection, or misguided passion... I know you, like many musicians, have strong feelings about the illegal reproduction of your music. But what do you say to those folks who want to zap off their emotions in a happy jumble of songs? Is the mix CD evil? Or should it be seen as a way to expand an artist's audience (while helping some hapless romantic express himself?)
-Nancy

A: I've always felt that personal use (ie among you, your family and friends) should be totally unrestricted. That's the best way to share music, and to discover it. But there's clearly a huge moral difference between personal use, and wholesale mass pirating, duplication and distribution, to anonymous millions of Internet users. The challenge is, how to fairly use technology or legislation to allow the one and prevent the other? It's almost impossible to draw the line. And historically, the lobbyists, litigators, and politicians have been way behind the curve.

It takes decades for copyright law to catch up with technology, by which time technology has moved on. This struggle has been going on since the printing press--not to mention audio recording, broadcasting, piano rolls, jukeboxes, cable TV and cassette tapes. While I have always fought against people who disregard the copyright notice on my records and go ahead and rip my music for the purpose of sharing it via illegal P2P networks, I am the first to admit that a certain proportion of music should be and always has been free.

As musicians we need to give out free samples, to get the audience hooked so they will come back for more. It's the drug dealer model! To that end, we produce music at our own expense and give it to radio stations who make money of the advertising revenue; we produce videos that we give to MTV so they can sell ads to Nike and American Express; we do this to get wide exposure so new fans can discover our music. Without that there will be no demand for any kind of for-sale product. And the Internet is the most effective method yet of getting that exposure. So clearly we need to embrace it. This is a tough time because we're still at a cusp.

In the end I believe it will all settle down--music will be cheap and easy enough to buy, that the convenience of obtaining music legally will outweigh the few cents you save by pirating it. There's Evian, then there's tap water :)

Toll Access? Can't Share? - Get Creative - Legally

GET CREATIVE

In one of McDawg's official capacities as a Patient Advocate, he has two officially authorised routes for gaining free access to Toll Access STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) literature.

I've already blogged about one of them via McBlawg here.

The other resource that I have access to is in relation to a fairly specific area of protein misfolding diseases.

This is great for me (and the others who have access) but I'm fairly restricted by traditional Publishers Copyright as to sharing this literature with others who might be interested.

As one OA community member so ably put it to me when I was handed this particular "golden key":-

Thanks for this - indeed a victory. This is definitely not open access, though; anyone else who wanted access would be in exactly the same boat as you were before. There are more than 500 academic institutions, in North America alone. With open access, more grad students and potential researchers would have access; some might be interested, and decide to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in this area.

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About two weeks ago, I spotted a new Manuscript of extremely significant interest and under "Fair Use", drew this to the attention of two contacts (McDawg has a lot). The one who responded remains an extremely reliable and sound contact at New Scientist.

From experience, this is simply water off a ducks back for McDawg but since I blog more regularly these days, I felt a blog post was in order.

Having closely followed research in a particular field of rare fatal neurodegenerative diseases for many years now, it's not every day when a new/novel form is discovered.

From the commentary Manuscript relating to the Manuscript in question:-

In this issue of Annals of Neurology, Gambetti and colleagues describe a new form of prion disease designated proteinase-sensitive prionopathy (PSPr). The discovery of any new form of disease is a milestone. The identification of this novel phenotype of prion disease reflects the value of a rigorous systematic surveillance program and underlines the importance of neuropathological examination and prion protein (PrP) typing in prion disease classification.

It was during a conversation with McDawg's father last night that McDawg was alerted to one of the growing number of media reports relating to this discovery. There are currently 15 including this one from the BBC. Several link back to either the abstract of the Manuscript and/or the article in the New Scientist which generated additional media interest.

From what I've read thus far, media coverage has been authoritative and accurate.

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As regular readers (Aunty Philippa and Uncle David) of such ramblings are aware, McDawg is an active (albeit, lurking in the background) member of the Open Access Community. McDawg has demonstrated yet again that "Fair Use" is not a crime and I urge other Patient Advocates and those interested in free culture to share information with a degree of creativity etc. as we continue to navigate the semantic web world that we now live in.

If you are even the slightest bit interested in what the global community can do in terms of Open Access, drop by the Open Access Directory. It's a wiki so anyone interested can get involved as reported here from the onset.