Sharing Nicely

The open access movement has had tremendous success increasing the amount of self-archived journal articles. Self-archiving means that authors can negotiate with publishers the right to keep a copy of their peer-reviewed article on a personal (or institutional) web-site for public download. Self-archived journal articles are usually covered by copyright, but users are allowed to download and print them.

This is great, because one would think it meant that the paper can be used in a class without having to worry about copyright clearance and fees. Unfortunately, copyright law and regulation in South Africa is murky on the issue of electronic distribution since it was drafted in 1978 when electronic information was not a huge issue yet (I find it particularly ironic that South African law refuses to acknowledge that some things have changed in the world since 1978). Andrew, who navigated me through a lot more legal detail than I am providing here, says the issue is clear as mud.

As a result there is uncertainty if a lecturer would be allowed to act as an “agent” on behalf of the students and make copies for all of them, or if the students would need to make individual copies themselves to avoid infringement. Andrew recommended that from the point of view of an institution, it is safer and advised to ask students to make their own copies.

Of course, this is a bit silly. First, it means that the students have to pay for the copies individually, which is likely to increase the per page cost (and the cost of education) since bulk discounts are not possible. Secondly, the end-result is exactly the same, all students have a printed copy of the paper to work with.

I increasingly feel that the law and regulation of copyright is so complicated and often runs counter to common sense, that we should seriously consider not only reforms, but maybe a clean slate approach to replace it with an alternative. Speaking to academics, students and librarians, I realise that the burden (not just cost, but also time and effort, and the significant concern that they might be doing something wrong) is too high.

In the field of patents and pharmaceutical inventions a recent bold proposal to create the Medical Innovation Prize Fund was recently introduced as a draft law by US Senator Sander. If accepted, at least in part, it would create a great precedent to  show that a radical and necessary change to the way we govern the results of intellectual activity is in fact possible.

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