Re: Abundant information, libre open access and information literacy

[richards1000@comcast.net]

If I understand correctly (and please correct me if I'm wrong), 
in her post of March 26, Heather Morrison argued that in order 
for users to obtain the right to engage in data mining or 
"hand-creating review articles incorporating . . . the original 
articles," the publications that are the object of such data 
mining or "hand-creating" must be "free-to- reuse."  It's unclear 
to me whether Heather Morrison intended this statement as an 
empirical assertion or a prescriptive assertion.

Then, in a post of March 27, Sally Morris made an empirical 
assertion, that "'Free to Reuse' is NOT what is needed for text 
mining, etc - in fact such content doesn't even need to be free 
to access. What it does need, though, is rigorous structuring and 
adherence to standards (for both text and data)."

I agree with Sally Morris's assertion, because (a) I am certain 
that many authors have created review articles by utilizing 
statutory, case law, or administrative law 'fair use' provisions, 
e.g., the fair use provisions of 17 U.S.C. sec. 107, that do not 
grant the right to freely reuse the copyrighted content (one can 
verify this by reading those articles and reading the applicable 
law); and (b) I am certain that many institutions and individuals 
have obtained the right to engage in data mining by the grant of 
licenses that did not convey the right to freely reuse the 
licensed content (one can verify this by examining the executed 
license agreements, or by observing such data mining that is 
governed by an implied license). Under U.S. law, a license is 
usually unnecessary for creation of a review article because such 
an article usually requires only the use of short excerpts of the 
original articles, and that use is generally permitted by the 
fair use statute.

The blog post at 
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1769
appears to make a number of prescriptive statements respecting 
access to publications and data.  None of those statements 
appears to challenge Sally Morris's empirical assertion that data 
mining and the creation of review articles have been and continue 
to be enabled by legal provisions and licenses that do not convey 
the right to freely reuse copyrighted content.  I honestly don't 
think that Sally Morris's empirical assertion can be refuted, 
because of the wealth of evidence supporting it.  If Klaus Graf 
has empirical evidence to challenge that empirical assertion, 
what is it?

The statements above do not constitute legal advice or legal 
representation.

Robert C. Richards, Jr., J.D.*, M.S.L.I.S., M.A.
Law Librarian & Legal Information Consultant
Philadelphia, PA
richards1000@comcast.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Klaus Graf" <klausgraf@googlemail.com>
To: richards1000@comcast.net
Cc: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu, sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:45:20 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: Abundant information, libre open access and information literacy

2009/3/31  <richards1000@comcast.net>:

> Klaus Graf:
>
> I don't understand your argument. Would you please explain it?
> Thank you.
>
> Robert Richards
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Klaus Graf" <klausgraf@googlemail.com>
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 5:10:17 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: Re: Abundant information, libre open access and information literacy
>
> 2009/3/27 Sally Morris (Morris Associates) <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>:
>
>> Heather, you have missed one point that I tried to make quite
>> carefully. 'Free to Reuse' is NOT what is needed for text
>> mining, etc - in fact such content doesn't even need to be free
>> to access.
>
> This is wrong, see e.g. http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/
>
> Klaus Graf

See now:

http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1769

"ANY barrier to access and re-use, however small and seemingly trivial
COMPLETELY destroys public semantic data."

Klaus Graf