The government dropped its case against Gang Chen. Scientists still see damage done; WBUR, February 16, 2022

Max Larkin, WBUR ; The government dropped its case against Gang Chen. Scientists still see damage done

"When federal prosecutors dropped all charges against MIT professor Gang Chen in late January, many researchers rejoiced in Greater Boston and beyond.

Chen had spent the previous year fighting charges that he had lied and omitted information on U.S. federal grant applications. His vindication was a setback for the "China Initiative," a controversial Trump-era legal campaign aimed at cracking down on the theft of American research and intellectual property by the Chinese government.

Researchers working in the United States say the China Initiative has harmed both their fellow scientists and science itself — as a global cooperative endeavor. But as U.S.-China tensions remain high, the initiative remains in place."

A Little-Known Statute Compels Medical Research Transparency. Compliance Is Pretty Shabby.; On The Media, April 21, 2021

 On The Media; A Little-Known Statute Compels Medical Research Transparency. Compliance Is Pretty Shabby.

"Evidence-based medicine requires just that: evidence. Access to the collective pool of knowledge produced by clinical trials is what allows researchers to safely and effectively design future studies. It's what allows doctors to make the most informed decisions for their patients.

Since 2007, researchers have been required by law to publish the findings of any clinical trial with human subjects within a year of the trial's conclusion. Over a decade later, even the country's most well-renown research institutions sport poor reporting records. This week, Bob spoke with Charles Piller, an investigative journalist at Science Magazine who's been documenting this dismal state of affairs since 2015. He recently published an op-ed in the New York Times urging President Biden to make good on his 2016 "promise" to start withholding funds to force compliance."

A New Copyright Office Warehouse–25 Years in the Making; Library of Congress, August 19, 2020

Holland Gormley, Library of Congress; A New Copyright Office Warehouse–25 Years in the Making

"The following is a guest post by Paul Capel, Supervisory Records Management Section Head.

The United States Copyright Office holds the most comprehensive collection of copyright records in the world. The Office has over 200,000 boxes of deposit copies spread among three storage facilities in Landover, Maryland; a contracted space in Pennsylvania; and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) facility in Massachusetts. Even with these three warehouses, that’s not enough space. Each day, the Office receives new deposits, and despite the increase in electronic deposits, our physical deposits continue to grow year after year.

These deposits are managed by the Deposit Copies Storage Unit, a dedicated team that springs into action to retrieve deposits when requested by examiners or researchers or for litigation cases. In this type of work, speed and efficiency of retrieval are critical. Managing deposits across three storage locations can present a challenge to our ideal retrieval times. When our records are stored in several locations, the potential for miscommunication or misplaced deposits increases.

This October, the Office will be opening a new 40,000 square foot warehouse that has been in discussion for over twenty-five years. We will be moving our deposits out of facilities that are more than forty years old to centrally locate them in a new state-of-the-art facility. This is a huge undertaking, and we are aiming to move 88,000 boxes from Landover in under 45 days. The new space is environmentally controlled and meets preservation requirements for the storage of federal records. Even more importantly, the new facility will allow the Office to maintain control over all our records in a single location, which will improve our retrieval times and will enable us to serve our stakeholders better.

This new facility is a great start, but we have an even bigger vision for our deposits. To truly inventory and track our deposits, the Office is investigating a warehouse management system that will help staff inventory, track, locate, and manage all the items in our warehouse. This type of system will help the Office enhance the availability and accessibility of materials, decreasing manual processing, and allowing for real-time tracking of deposits at any given time. It will also let us know who has them and when their period of retention ends.

This system will provide all the notifications  expected from any modern delivery service. Copyright Office staff will be able to obtain a copy of their order and tell when it is in transit, know when it has been delivered, and sign for it digitally. This system will also provide transparency to others who might have an interest in requesting the same deposit, to see where it currently is, who has it, and how long they have had it."

Putting China in charge of the world’s intellectual property is a bad idea; The Washington Post, Janaury 30, 2020

Josh Rogin , The Washington Post; Putting China in charge of the world’s intellectual property is a bad idea

"Beijing is lobbying hard to take over leadership of the international organization that oversees intellectual property, which could result in dire consequences for the future of technology and economic competition. But the U.S.-led effort to prevent this from happening faces a steep uphill climb.

In March, 83 countries will vote to elect the next director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a U.N.-created body founded in 1967 “to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world.” The Chinese candidate, Wang Binying, currently serves as one of its four deputy director-generals and is widely seen as the front-runner.

On its face, allowing China to assume leadership of the WIPO poses a clear risk to the integrity of the institution, given that the U.S. government has singled out China as the leading source of intellectual property theft in the world."

It’s Copyright Week 2020: Stand Up for Copyright Laws That Actually Serve Us All; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), January 20, 2020

Katharine Trendacosta, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); It’s Copyright Week 2020: Stand Up for Copyright Laws That Actually Serve Us All

"We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing what's at stake and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation...

We continue to fight for a version of copyright that does what it is supposed to. And so, every year, EFF and a number of diverse organizations participate in Copyright Week. Each year, we pick five copyright issues to highlight and advocate a set of principles of copyright law. This year’s issues are:

• Monday: Fair Use and Creativity
  Copyright policy should encourage creativity, not hamper it. Fair use makes it possible for us to comment, criticize, and rework our common culture.
• Tuesday: Copyright and Competition
  Copyright should not be used to control knowledge, creativity, or the ability to tinker with or repair your own devices. Copyright should encourage more people to share, make, or repair things, rather than concentrate that power in only a few players.
• Wednesday: Remedies
  Copyright claims should not raise the specter of huge, unpredictable judgments that discourage important uses of creative work. Copyright should have balanced remedies that also provide a real path for deterring bad-faith claims.
• Thursday: The Public Domain
  The public domain is our cultural commons and a crucial resource for innovation and access to knowledge. Copyright should strive to promote, and not diminish, a robust, accessible public domain.
• Friday: Copyright and Democracy
  Copyright must be set through a participatory, democratic, and transparent process. It should not be decided through back-room deals, secret international agreements, unaccountable bureaucracies, or unilateral attempts to apply national laws extraterritorially.

Every day this week, we’ll be sharing links to blog posts and actions on these topics at https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek and at #CopyrightWeek on Twitter.

As we said last year, and the year before that, if you too stand behind these principles, please join us by supporting them, sharing them, and telling your lawmakers you want to see copyright law reflect them."

Elsevier signs first open-access deal in the United States; Science, November 25, 2019

Science News Staff, Science; Elsevier signs first open-access deal in the United States

"Publishing giant Elsevier has signed its first open-access deal with a U.S. institution, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Inside Higher Ed reports. The arrangement, which CMU announced on 21 November, will allow CMU scholars to publish articles in any Elsevier journal on an immediately free-to-read basis. CMU researchers will also continue to have access to paywalled Elsevier articles, which previous contracts covered with subscription fees.

CMU did not disclose the cost of the arrangement, which has been a sticking point in Elsevier’s open-access negotiations with other research institutions. After the University of California system insisted on a price cut, Elsevier’s negotiations failed in February; in April, a research consortium in Norway cut a deal with Elsevier similar to CMU’s, while agreeing to a price hike. “All I can say is that we achieved the financial objectives we set out to achieve,” Keith Webster, dean of CMU’s university libraries and director of emerging and integrative media initiatives, tells Inside Higher Ed. 

CMU researchers only publish about 175 papers annually in Elsevier journals. That low volume gives Elsevier an opportunity to test the 4-year arrangement with relatively low financial risk."

New Guidelines For Tech Companies To Be Transparent, Accountable On Censoring User Content; Intellectual Property Watch, May 7, 2018,

Intellectual Property Watch; New Guidelines For Tech Companies To Be Transparent, Accountable On Censoring User Content

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called on Facebook, Google, and other social media companies today to publicly report how many user posts they take down, provide users with detailed explanations about takedowns, and implement appeals policies to boost accountability.

EFF, ACLU of Northern California, Center for Democracy & Technology, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and a group of academic experts and free expression advocates today released the Santa Clara Principles, a set of minimum standards for tech companies to augment and strengthen their content moderation policies. The plain language, detailed guidelines call for disclosing not just how and why platforms are removing content, but how much speech is being censored. The principles are being released in conjunction with the second edition of the Content Moderation and Removal at Scale conference. Work on the principles began during the first conference, held in Santa Clara, California, in February.

“Our goal is to ensure that enforcement of content guidelines is fair, transparent, proportional, and respectful of users’ rights,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo."

Why an Indian hotel startup is taking the difficult route of filing patents; Quartz, March 28, 2018

Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz; Why an Indian hotel startup is taking the difficult route of filing patents

"India and patents

High costs, lengthy processing periods, and a general lack of awareness are huge deterrents for startups eyeing patents in India. Gaps in the system, like a shortage of examiners, have caused hundreds of thousands of applications to pile up.

“Filing patents is common practice in other parts of the world but the importance of filing patents has only of late become apparent to startups in India,” said Anindya Ghose, the Heinz Riehl professor of business at New York University. Shorter processing times for intellectual property (IP) rights applications, an 80% rebate on patent fees for startups, and more transparency around the system are helping.

However, the country is still ranked an unimpressive 44th out of 50 in a score of IP robustness compiled by the US Chamber of Commerce (pdf) this year. “India’s score continues to suggest that additional, meaningful reforms are needed to complement the Policy,” the federal entity said."

To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software; New York Times, August 3, 2017

R. James Woolsey and Brian J. Fox, New York Times; To Protect Voting,Use Open-Source Software

"If the community of proprietary vendors, including Microsoft, would support the use of open-source model for elections, we could expedite progress toward secure voting systems.

With an election on the horizon, it’s urgent that we ensure that those who seek to make our voting systems more secure have easy access to them, and that Mr. Putin does not."

Open data comes to Syracuse; WRVO, July 27, 2017

Ellen Abbott, WRVO; Open data comes to Syracuse

"Mayor Stephanie Miner says this kind of open data policy is the wave of the future.

"This is how people are thinking about governmental services in terms of transparency. And now that resources are as tight as they are. This will help you measure the effectiveness and efficiency of policies put into place."

Should Open Access And Open Data Come With Open Ethics?; Forbes, July 20, 2017

Kalev Leetaru, Forbes; Should Open Access And Open Data Come With Open Ethics?

"In the end, the academic community must decide if “openness” and “transparency” apply only to the final outputs of our scholarly institutions, with individual researchers, many from fields without histories of ethical prereview, are exclusively empowered to decide what constitutes ethical and moral conduct and just how much privacy should be permitted in our digital society, or if we should add “open ethics” to our focus on open access and open data and open universities up to public discourse on just what the future of “big data” research should look like."

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?; Guardian, July 16, 2017

Cathy O'Neil, Guardian; 

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

[Kip Currier: Cathy O'Neil is shining much-needed light on the little-known but influential power of algorithms on key aspects of our lives. I'm using her thought-provoking 2016 Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy as one of several required reading texts in my Information Ethics graduate course at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Computing and Information.]

"A proliferation of silent and undetectable car crashes is harder to investigate than when it happens in plain sight.

I’d still maintain there’s hope. One of the miracles of being a data sceptic in a land of data evangelists is that people are so impressed with their technology, even when it is unintentionally creating harm, they openly describe how amazing it is. And the fact that we’ve already come across quite a few examples of algorithmic harm means that, as secret and opaque as these algorithms are, they’re eventually going to be discovered, albeit after they’ve caused a lot of trouble.

What does this mean for the future? First and foremost, we need to start keeping track. Each criminal algorithm we discover should be seen as a test case. Do the rule-breakers get into trouble? How much? Are the rules enforced, and what is the penalty? As we learned after the 2008 financial crisis, a rule is ignored if the penalty for breaking it is less than the profit pocketed. And that goes double for a broken rule that is only discovered half the time...

It’s time to gird ourselves for a fight. It will eventually be a technological arms race, but it starts, now, as a political fight. We need to demand evidence that algorithms with the potential to harm us be shown to be acting fairly, legally, and consistently. When we find problems, we need to enforce our laws with sufficiently hefty fines that companies don’t find it profitable to cheat in the first place. This is the time to start demanding that the machines work for us, and not the other way around."

Five questions about open science answered; Phys.org, May 30, 2017

Elizabeth Gilbert, Katie Corker, 

Phys.org; Five questions about open science answered

"What is "open science"?

Open science is a set of practices designed to make scientific processes and results more transparent and accessible to people outside the research team. It includes making complete research materials, data and lab procedures freely available online to anyone. Many scientists are also proponents of open access, a parallel movement involving making research articles available to read without a subscription or access fee."

Chinese Government and Hollywood Launch Snoop-and-Censor Copyright Filter; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), May 1, 2017

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Chinese Government and Hollywood Launch Snoop-and-Censor Copyright Filter

"Two weeks ago the Copyright Society of China (also known as the China Copyright Association) launched its new 12426 Copyright Monitoring Center, which is dedicated to scanning the Chinese Internet for evidence of copyright infringement. This frightening panopticon is said to be able to monitor video, music and images found on "mainstream audio and video sites and graphic portals, small and medium vertical websites, community platforms, cloud and P2P sites, SmartTV, external set-top boxes, aggregation apps, and so on."...

The announcement of China's government-linked 12426 Copyright Monitoring Center is absolutely chilling. It is just as chilling that the governments of the United States and Europe are being lobbied by copyright holders to follow China's lead. Although this call is being heard on both sides of the Atlantic, it has gained the most ground in Europe, where it needs to be urgently stopped in its tracks. Europeans can learn more and speak out against these draconian censorship demands at the Save the Meme campaign website."

Trump’s actions raise fears about access to government data; The Spokesman-Review, March 8, 2017

Stuart Leavenworth and Adam Ashton, The Spokesman-Review; Trump’s actions raise fears about access to government data

"Wondering who is visiting the White House? The web-based search has gone dark. Curious about climate change? Some government sites have been softened or taken down. Worried about racial discrimination in housing? Laws have been introduced to bar federal mapping of such disparities. Federal rules protecting whistleblowers? At least one has been put on hold.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has made a series of moves that have alarmed groups with a stake in public access to information – historians, librarians, journalists, climate scientists, internet activists, to name a few. Some are so concerned they have thrown themselves into “data rescue” sessions nationwide, where they spend their weekends downloading and archiving federal databases they fear could soon be taken down or obscured...

“What is unprecedented is the scale of networking and connectivity of groups working on this, and the degree it is being driven by librarians and scientists and professors,” said Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group that tracks transparency in government."

Peer-review activists push psychology journals towards open data; Nature, March 1, 2017

Gautam Naik, Nature; 

Peer-review activists push psychology journals towards open data

"An editor on the board of a journal published by the prestigious American Psychological Association (APA) has been asked to resign in a controversy over data sharing in peer review.

Gert Storms — who says he won’t step down — is one of a few hundred scientists who have vowed that, from the start of this year, they will begin rejecting papers if authors won’t publicly share the underlying data, or explain why they can’t.

The idea, called the Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative, was launched by psychologists hoping to increase transparency in a field beset by reports of fraud and dubious research practices. And the APA, which does not ask that data be made available to peer reviewers or shared openly online, seems set to become an early testing ground for the initiative’s influence. With Storms’ situation still unresolved, the society’s council of editors will discuss whether it should change its policies at a meeting in late March."

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, February 24, 2017

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright

"Next week the latest round of secret negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) kicks off in Kobe, Japan. Once the shy younger sibling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the recent death of the TPP has thrust RCEP further into the spotlight, and raised the stakes both for its sixteen prospective parties, and for lobbyists with designs to stamp their own mark on the text's intellectual property and e-commerce chapters.

Our last analysis of RCEP pointed out some of the ways in which the then-current leaked text represented an improvement on the TPP, but how other parts of it—including those on copyright enforcement—repeated its mistakes and failed to seize opportunities for improvement. This week, over 60 copyright scholars released an open letter that sets out their views of what negotiators ought to do in order to address these problems...

The RCEP negotiators evidently haven't taken the failure of the TPP to heart, or they would be doing more to ensure that their negotiations are inclusive, transparent, and strike a fair balance between the interests of copyright owners and those of the public."

Open Science: Beyond Open Access webinar; Library Journal, February 21, 2017

Library Journal; Open Science: Beyond Open Access webinar

"Open Science: Beyond Open Access

Presented by: Dove Press & Library Journal

Event Date & Time: Tuesday, February 21st, 2017, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET / 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM PT

Collaboration can be a major driver for success. When data is shared among researchers, analysts and stakeholders, the opportunities for innovation and development increase exponentially, particularly in the medical and science fields. To be most effective, the Open Science framework demands more than simply sharing data–it requires dedication, transparency and responsible publishing.

Join this webcast to learn from our panel of experts as they discuss the challenges and benefits of Open Science in the context of global health and medical concerns. They will explain how the disruptive concept of Open Data can reshape and improve the nature of research and results.

Panelists

• Dr. Eric Little, VP of Data Science, OSTHUS
• Dr. Robin Bloor, Chief Analyst, The Bloor Group
• Andrew Johnson, Research Data Librarian/Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder

Moderator

• Rebecca Jozwiak, Editorial & Research Director, The Bloor Group"

It's Copyright Week: Join Us in the Fight for a Better Copyright Law; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 1/16/17

Kerry Sheehan, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

It's Copyright Week: Join Us in the Fight for a Better Copyright Law

"We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what's at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation...

Here are this year’s Copyright Week principles:

• Monday: Building and Defending the Public Domain. The public domain is our cultural commons and a crucial resource for innovation and access to knowledge. Copyright policy should strive to promote, and not diminish, a robust, accessible public domain.

• Tuesday: You Bought It, You Own It, You Fix It. Copyright law shouldn't interfere with your freedom to truly own your stuff: to repair it, tinker with it, recycle it, use it on any device, lend it, and then give it away (or re-sell it) when you're done.

• Wednesday: Transparency and Representation. Copyright policy must be set through a participatory, democratic, and transparent process. It should not be decided through back room deals, secret international agreements, or unilateral attempts to apply national laws extraterritorially.

• Thursday: 21st Century Creators. Copyright law should account for the interests of all creators, not just those backed by traditional copyright industries. YouTube creators, remixers, fan artists and independent musicians (among others) are all part of the community of creators that encourage cultural progress and innovation.

• Friday: Copyright and Free Speech. Freedom of expression is fundamental to our democratic system. Copyright law should promote, not restrict or suppress free speech.

Every day this week, we’ll be sharing links to blog posts and actions on these topics at https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek and at #CopyrightWeek.

If you’ve followed Copyright Week in past years, you may note that this year, we didn’t designate a specific day to focus on fair use. Fair use—the legal doctrine that permits many important uses of copyrighted works without permission or payment—is critical to the law’s ability to promote creativity, innovation, and freedom of expression. Fair use is a part of each of this year’s principles."

More New Ways to Explore Patent Data; Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee, Director's Forum Blog, 1/12/17

Michelle K. Lee, Blog by Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO Michelle K. Lee, Director's Forum Blog; More New Ways to Explore Patent Data

"Making patent data accessible to the public has been a cornerstone of this agency’s policy since its inception. I’m pleased to announce yet another step we’ve taken at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to make such data even easier for the public to understand and use, namely the addition of new features to our patent data visualization and analysis tool, PatentsView. First launched in 2014, PatentsView provides the public a variety of ways to interactively engage, through a web-based platform, the highest-quality patent data available. The underlying database connects 40 years’ worth of information about inventors, their organizations, and their locations in unprecedented ways. PatentsView is a key component of our open data efforts to improve the accessibility, usability, and transparency of U.S. patent data...

You could argue that the innovations documented in our records may very well, collectively, constitute the world’s largest repository of scientific and technological knowledge. But the larger a data set, the more challenging it is to find useful information or trends or, put another way, to separate the signal from the noise. This collaborative tool, developed by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Economist in conjunction with the American Institutes for Research, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley, Twin Arch Technologies, and Periscopic, aims to make that sorting and separation possible. The shared public and private effort in creating and improving the platform is symbolized in the “.org” domain of http://www.PatentsView.org.

By providing new tools and data to the public, PatentsView demonstrates this agency’s continuing commitment to open data, open government, and evidence-based policymaking."