Tag: Open Access to Research

Here at PK, we’ve been keeping our heads down the past few days, trying to fight against some really bad legislation. Once we finally get word of one, another one popped up. There are three in all (so far) are four (another was introduced during the writing of this post!!!) and we’re going to need your help to put them away.

S. 3325, The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008

First up is the Senate’s version of the House’s PRO-IP bill, S. 3325, “The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008.” Rashmi’s written a good breakdown of the differences between the bills, but that analysis may not hold up for long as we’re hearing that, as you read this, a deal may have been made to nix the differences between the bills so a compromise can be passed with ease.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been in South Korea, attending the OECD’s Ministerial on the Future of the Internet Economy. Rather than try to give a blow-by-blow account, I’ve tried to package some of my thoughts in a series of posts. Here’s one:

The OECD Ministerial has ended with the signing of the Seoul Declaration, a document signed by the member nations of the OECD, as well as the European Community and observer countries Chile, Egypt, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Latvia, Senegal and Slovenia. The Declaration sets out the international organization’s general policies for ensuring the future of the Internet Economy—including policies they believe will encourage creativity, support convergence, and promote confidence online.

Sometime back, on my regular blog, I wrote about a company called M2Z and their quest to get a free nationwide 20 MHz license. In exchange, they promised free (filtered) broadband (well, 384 MBPS) for everyone, a faster subscription tier (with opt out on the filtering), and a bunch of other things — notably a commitment to net neutrality, a general commitment to wholesale, and a flavor of open device attachment/wireless Carterfone.

Tomorrow the House is set to vote on an appropriations bill that would mandate that all National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded researchers make their findings publicly available, for free, within 12 months of publishing their work in a private journal. Currently the NIH is responsible for some $28 billion in research grants annually - about 28% of all money spent on biomedical research in the United States. But while taxpayers cover all these expenses, none of the results from these research grants must be made available to the public. Instead the findings of these projects are published in private academic journals, subscriptions to which can thousands of dollars for a single title.

Congress Daily (subscription required) is reporting that FCC Chairman Martin will issue a draft of the 700 MHz rules this week. As can be expected from such a high profile matter, rumors are flying about what will and will not be in this “Chairman’s Draft.” One of my colleagues describes the release of the draft like being in the 7th inning of a 9-inning baseball game - if you are winning in the 7th inning, you feel pretty good about your chances. If you are not…then you know you have to pull out all the stops to be victorious. This might include bringing pressure to bear from members of Congress, calling on the netroots and blogosphere to weigh in, and ramping up pressure on the mainstream media to cover the issue.

The Public Knowledge blog is a great source for up-to-date information on key communications and copyright issues. But if you haven’t been reading it forever, well, it can be a little hard to jump in. Here, then, is a primer on some of the issues we’ve been working on, what’s new, and why you should care.

According to Michael Geist Canada is also planning a major spectrum auction for 2008. And, like here, the mainstream media have about zero interest in covering it. Not only do they have the spectrum auction discussed by Geist coming up, but they will then have their own spectrum auction for broadcast spectrum when they do their transition to digital television.

I hope folks in Canada are paying attention to our current spectrum auction fights down here. In the past, I’ve often felt that Canada has done a better job than we have of resisting the blandishments of industry when setting its various intellectual property, privacy, and telecom policies. I hope the CRTC (Canada’s version of the FCC) and, more importantly, Canadian civil society, watch our public debate and feel inspired to have a public debate about this themselves.

Previously, I’ve written about how the success of the MVNO (though not without its problems) demonstrates how an Open Access-like business model can work in a wireless context. The underlying carrier, such as Sprint or Verizon, can sell access to its network at wholesale rates to a company like Virgin Mobile, which then markets to consumers. This model can be and is a success both for the retailer and the wholesaler.

• YouTube will begin using filtering technology to block users from posting copyrighted content. This technology has long been demanded by studio executives and decried by public interest groups

• eBay has opened its three largest businesses - eBay, PayPal, and Skype - to third party developers. The open API’s will allow outside individuals and companies to build new shopping and buying applications, but because only a few developers will be given ‘preferred’ status, new programs may be slow in coming.

• Yahoo said that China should not punish people for expressing their political opinions on the Internet. This comes one day after a Chinese woman announced her intention to sue Yahoo for helping Chinese officials imprison her son.

• Former Engadget editor Pete Rojas is launching a new music blog that will give away songs for free. The site, RCRD LBL, will make money through advertisements on its blog.

• The FCC formally opened its review of the XM-Sirius merger to public comment. The Commission has aimed to complete the merger review within 180 days, though that date is not binding

• Apple may soon begin a $2.99 movie rental service. The DRM-protected downloads would survive for $30 days and could be copied to one other device, such as an iPod or iPhone.

• The Church of England is considering suing Sony for using Manchester Cathedral as a site in its new first-person-shooter video game. The Church is demanding that Sony apologize and that ‘Resistance: Fall of Man’ be pulled from shelves.

• Forbes has an article this week about the fight for Open Access

  “It’s now clear that the techies are learning, fast, how to take a fight to Washington. One of the companies pushing the idea—Frontline Wireless—already has former FCC Chairman Reed Hunt on staff, proving they know how to play this game. Now we’ll see if they have the stomach to win it.”

• The Chicago Tribune says that opening up the set top box market will raise consumers’ cable bills

  What seems more certain is that consumers’ monthly cable bills are likely to rise a few dollars after the new rule takes effect. That’s because the cable box born from the regulation costs more to produce, a cost likely to get passed down to TV watchers, analysts and cable operators say.

You can see why we disagree with this conclusion here, here, and here