Robert McMillan, Lessig: Be wary of "IP extremists", ComputerWorld, March 17, 2004. Summarizing Lawrence Lessig's Tuesday talk to the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. Excerpt: "Citing a decision last year by the World Intellectual Property Organization to cancel a meeting on the role of open source in world intellectual property law [PS: the meeting would also have covered open access to research literature], Lessig said that the argument over intellectual property law has become unnecessarily polarized because entities such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claim that there are only two choices when it comes to IP: maximum copyright protection or anarchy....Lessig argued that balanced intellectual property laws were essential to innovation, which often flourishes without strict IP encumbrances. 'This debate is not commerce versus anything,' he said. 'This debate is about whether powerful interests can stop new innovations. It is a cultural dilemma.' Without the abdication of at least some intellectual property rights, important 'intellectual commons' such as the Internet, the Human Genome Project, and even the Global Positioning System could never develop, he said."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/17/2004 08:53:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
