Lessig on science, copyright and the moral case for open access

Larry Lessig's talk at CERN on the way that copyright interacts with science publishing is a stirring call-to-arms to free up scientific discovery and inquiry. While artists debate the questions of exclusive rights, income, creativity and copyright, scientists operate in a different tradition. Since the Enlightenment, wide publication and review of scientific material has been the cornerstone of good scientific practice.

Whereas copyright tends to focus on protecting artists' ability to make money from their work, scientists don't use similar incentives. And yet, her work is often kept within the gates of the ivory tower, reserved for those whose universities or institutions have purchased access, often at high costs. And for science in the age of the internet, which wants ideas to spread as widely as possible to encourage more creativity and development, this isn't just bad: it's immoral.

Lessig: Copyright isn't just hurting creativity: it's killing science (video) (via /.)

• [Bruno Souza]

  Why do we need to have a “rights to transcripts” movement when Lessig already licenses his talk as Creative Commons, and as such, you have the right to transcript it. And translate it. And use it in your talks. And even, as Lessig points out, to innovate on it for things that even Lessig may find “uncool”.

  He is a fabulous presenter but also an amazing writer! If you want to _read_ Lessig, no need to read a transcript of something he prepared for the impact of the images… Go read his “Remix” book, that is fabulous, and goes into much deeper details then the talk. And, btw, is also available online and under a creative commons license too…

  http://www.scribd.com/doc/47089238/Remix

• [Tdawwg]

  Let’s have a “rights to transcripts” movement too: why listen to Lessig for fifty minutes when I can skim him in five, read him in ten? Think of all the content one misses out on by not having time–or, more interestingly, by not willing to submit to the current regime of “videos everywhere, all the time, for everything.”

  • [Anonymous]

    Totally agree. I can read often, but my video time is limited. Also think of those behind bandwidth caps.

    RGB

    • [Tdawwg]

      It’s astounding to see a basic necessity of a free and open society, i.e., text as documentation, vanish seemingly overnight from so many places as it’s replaced with less-useful video: now the performance, not the text from which it sprang, is the primary witness to the historical event. Absolutely terrifying to me as both a scholar and a citizen.

      I’d sit through Gielgud reading Lessig, but Lessig reading Lessig is burdensome, to say the least.

• [Kerouac]

  Printed letters do not flow from Mr. Lessig’s mouth and arrange themselves on paper. If there is going to be a transcript, it is necessary for someone to transcribe the speech. I would invite any or all of the people complaining about the lack of a transcript to prepare one. Maybe you can all take turns, so none of you have to shoulder too much of the load. I would find Mr. Lessig’s monologue even more enjoyable if it had a clean citrus scent. Should I complain that it came unscented?

  • [Tdawwg]

    I missed where this was an ex tempore oration. If a “talk,” then it’s been prepared: a text will do nicely. Why not provide one? If transcript is perhaps an inexact word here, then substitute text.

    @Laroquod: try resuscitating Virgil from Servius’s commentary. Try reviving the Bible from a scholiast’s gloss. Comments are fun, but the text is central. A primary text morphing into commentary is certainly interesting, but a commentary =/= the primary text. I think we all love mashups etc., but not to the degree that we’d forego the originals.

    @Bruno: I mean less of a right to copy or reuse things as I see fit, more of a “reader’s rights” concept, where those of us who prefer to read things–because we don’t care to waste an hour on a performance, because we read quickly, just because, etc.–don’t have to take a backseat during the Great Media Transvergence of Last Week. His books are indeed fascinating: we both know this because we’ve read them, right? How many of us would have forgone consuming them if they’d been in a single medium, such as an audio recording or YouTube video? QED.

• [Anonymous]

  Late to the tirade, but I wholeheartedly endorse the mediumfight! I read BB at work and can’t get any video content past the firewall. Some of the shorter TED talk videos posted lately do have transcripts and I’ve really appreciated that. Just from the standpoint of more formats = more potential audience/page views/societal impact, transcripst of online video content is a good idea.

  @Tdawg: “Great Media Transvergence of Last Week” — I <3 that :-)

  @Anon #14: Why so contrary? Maybe this video is a virtuoso performance (I don’t know ’cause I can’t view it), but doesn’t getting content to the broadest audience possible make more sense than restricting it to the smallest slice of those with the most technology and time at their disposal? Jeesh!

• [Anonymous]

  > The irony of which is that you must be at a university to get access to the journal.

  There’s Inter-Library Loan! There’s plenty of non-university places that subscribe to online resources! Public libraries and community colleges and all kinds of places! There’s ways through this discourse that don’t fadge up elitist conflict! Fielding large digital publishing ventures costs money! Still! Even PLOS costs money: http://www.plos.org/support/index.php

• [Laroquod]

  Usually when there is a video I don’t have time for I just read the comments below it and I get the general gist well enough. So it would be going to far to say that textual documentation is disappearing — to the contrary it is everpresent in the form of constant commentary by the receiving community. Not that I am against the idea of some sort of generalised transcription movement. More videos transcribed would be a cool and useful outcome. But if this is a mediumfight, I think there is something important being overlooked about the way media are now being blended. Text representations of info are actually in existence almost everywhere there is info. It’s just the sourcing of that text that’s getting mashed up and traded around, which may not be such a bad thing.

• [Anonymous]

  This is Lessig’s style. He builds reader response and impact via presentation style. The intention of the slow, visually punctuated, unfolding presentation is specifically to captivate and connect. The reason why his videos are often up on boingboing is because they can be captivating to watch, have a strong message, connect to the viewer, and Lessig has a viewership. You have to respect it for what it is. Complaining that his presentation are time consuming is a bit ridiculous. He’s a very good presenter and speaker…you’re suppose to enjoy the experience…not race to digest the bullet points. It would be like choosing to skim a novel…cause you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing. Or fast forward through songs on an album instead of taking the time to listen to it. Speeding through life won’t allow much of it to sink in and impact you.

  • [Anonymous]

    I meant in general, not just Lessig. Everything seems to be videoed. I can read on a phone and at work. Can’t watch videos that way.

    RGB

  • [Tdawwg]

    Allow me to point out that a plurality of media allows you to enjoy spending fifty minutes of your life watching this, and allows me to enjoy spending ten minutes of my life reading it. Those who favor reading can read; those who like performance, presence, etc. can watch. Whereas a single format renders other options impossible.

    Your analogies are flawed: a better one would be the difference between being forced to listen to endless hours of an audiobook without the option of reading the text of the book. Whyn’t give both options, and all other feasible ones? I do rather like how you’re arguing for a single way to use one’s media on BoingBoing, of all places: ironic.

    Mediumfight!

    • [Anonymous]

      Well they’re aren’t a plurality of formats in this case. You’re welcome to ask for what doesn’t exist. Perhaps it doesn’t exist for a reason? Perhaps the presentation is the apriori format for this content. And a transcript or the source notes wouldn’t do justice to the intention of the presentation?

      You are right…I enjoyed watching it. But I don’t think you really would have enjoyed reading it in 10 minutes. Clearly you don’t really enjoy Lessig. You’d enjoy being able to get through it in 10 minutes. But perhaps you could just not consume it and enjoy using your time more wisely?

      AS to my analogy. It wasn’t flawed. Except in that it didn’t support your argument or needs.

      Your “better” audio book analogy however is specious at best. It’s based on the hidden presumption that you could speed read or skim the novel.

      If skimming the novel is an option…than you really shouldn’t bother to read it.

      If skimming wasn’t available as an option…your audio book analogy suddenly flips. If you had a good novel…you’d want to take the time to read it. If you had a bad novel, you’d probably prefer to waste the same time by suffering through the audio book (as you could probably do something else in the background).

      - I’m stressing enjoying the original work.
      - You are stressing getting quickly through a boring work.

      Clearly I enjoy Lessig. And you probably don’t.

      My analogies are still relevant. You’d rather fast forward through a boring album. Or skim a bad book.

      I’d just choose not to consume them.

      I suggest you do the same.

• [Anonymous]

  The scientific paywall journal empire could be crumbled in a swift stroke if sufficiently organized and extensive. If 10.000 people with access downloaded a portion of the content (with automation help from some nifty scripts) then a mirror outside the paywall could be assembled. Surely 10.000 students and/or researchers would be willing to participate. Bringing freedom as in beer for all is a means to the other sense of freedom in this context.

• [Anonymous]

  Scientists do not have the same monetary compulsion for copyright protection because their coinage of exchange is not money but prestige: papers, citations, awards, peer recognition. This has been most clealry described by Georg Franck, “The scientific economy of attention: A novel approach to the collective rationality of science” Scientometrics, Vol. 55, No. 1 (2002) 3–26.

  http://www.springerlink.com/content/r7064517337j0234/

  The irony of which is that you must be at a university to get access to the journal.

  The Abstract:

  Science is the core sector of present-day knowledge production. Yet, the mechanisms of science as an industry are poorly understood. The economic theory of science is still in its infancy, and philosophy of science has only sparsely addressed the issue of economic rationality. Research, however, is costly. Inefficient use of resources consumed by the scientific industry is as detrimental to the collective advancement of knowledge as are deficiencies in method. Economic inefficiency encompasses methodological inadequacy. Methods are inadequate if they tend to misallocate time and effort. If one omits the question of how inputs are transformed into outputs in self-organised knowledge production, this means neglecting an essential aspect of the collective rationality of science. A self-organised tendency towards efficiency comes to the fore as soon as science is described as an economy in which researchers invest their own attention in order to obtain the attention of others. Viewed like this, scientific communication appears to be a market where information is exchanged for attention. Scientific information is measured in terms of the attention it earns. Since scientists demand scientific information as a means of production, the attention that a theory attracts is a measure of its value as a capital good. On the other hand, the attention a scientist earns is capitalised into the asset called reputation. Elaborating the ideas introduced in Franck (1998) and (1999), the paper describes science as a highly developed market economy. Science conceived as capital market covers the specific conditions under which scientists, while maximising their reputation, optimise output in the eyes of those competent to judge. Attention is not just any resource. It is the resource whose efficient use is called intelligence. Science, as an industry transforming attention into cognitive output, is bound to miss the hallmark of rationality if it does not pass a test of collective intelligence. The paper closes with considering the prospective outcome of such a test.