Re: Crown copyright petition (please sign)

Posted by Amanda Wakaruk on May 30, 2017; 5:28pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Crown-copyright-petition-please-sign-tp7671p7675.html

Definitely. Government reports from the 1980s and 1990s encouraged a "public domain by default" approach to government publications. We are starting to see a bit of this with data sets but not publications. 

One barrier example related to academic work: as per general TBS terms and conditions, researchers submitting articles to a commercial publisher need to first ask permission if they are including a statistical table (or any excerpt) that was published in a government report.

Amanda

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 11:11 AM, Mark Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

I like it. I must admit that was one of the questions I asked myself when I first quickly reviewed the material ie. was I restricted from reusing publically released documents? And here you have hit the nail on the head. I agree (with the US anyway) that most gov’t documents should be released into the public domain. Silly and huge waste of taxpayers’ money to have bureaucracy  setup to police this.

 

Mark Smith

Associate Director, Repository and Deliverables

Manitoba Centre for Health Policy

Dept. of Community Health Sciences

University of Manitoba

408-727 McDermot Ave
Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3E 3P5

T: <a href="tel:(204)%20789-3264" value="[phone]" target="_blank">204-789-3264

E: [hidden email]

W: http://umanitoba.ca/medicine/units/mchp/

 

  

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Amanda Wakaruk
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2017 12:01 PM
To: civicaccess discuss <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] Crown copyright petition (please sign)

 

Hi Mark. Thanks for signing the petition and for your suggestion. 

Yes, I am in the process of developing more accessible promotional materials. The challenge is to do so without the message becoming misleading. 

 

Attached is an example that speaks to the "by the people for the people" financial argument. While this line of reasoning misses larger points it likely has relevance for a wider base. Of course, it could also be argued that terms and conditions do allow for some types of re-use without permission for many government works. So even this simple statement is misleading. The complexity of the Crown copyright system is perhaps one of the reasons reform has been delayed for over 30 years.

 

Best,

 

Amanda

 

Amanda Wakaruk, MLIS, MES

Copyright Librarian, Copyright Office

Learning Services, University of Alberta 

[hidden email] 

 

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Mark Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Amanda, thanks for promoting this and for sharing with the group. I’ve signed of course. I did find the density of the background document a bit daunting and wondered how useful it might be for engaging a broader audience? Have you considered other approaches like an infographic or “1 pager” written at a Gr 6-7 level (suitable for distribution in a classroom, for example). Just a few ideas, given the importance of the message and the need to broaden the base of support.

 

Cheers, and best of luck with this.

 

Mark

 

Mark Smith

Associate Director, Repository and Deliverables

Manitoba Centre for Health Policy

Dept. of Community Health Sciences

University of Manitoba

408-727 McDermot Ave
Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3E 3P5

T: <a href="tel:(204)%20789-3264" target="_blank">204-789-3264

E: [hidden email]

W: http://umanitoba.ca/medicine/units/mchp/

 

  

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Amanda Wakaruk
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2017 10:27 AM
To: civicaccess discuss <[hidden email]>
Subject: [CivicAccess-discuss] Crown copyright petition (please sign)

 

 

Much of the discussion on CivicAccess is about government data, which is increasingly assigned an open government licence (yay!). However, government publications continue to be restricted by Crown copyright, with only a handful of the hundreds of thousands of Canadian federal government publications assigned an open government licence (see http://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset?q=).

 

Please take a moment to sign this House of Commons petition asking the Government of Canada to respond to the longstanding need to fix Crown copyright in Canada.

https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-1116

 

I have tried to summarize the importance of reforming Crown copyright at fixcrowncopyright.ca but we all know that the audience for this issue is small, despite the wide breadth of its impact. This is why I am also asking that you please forward this petition to your colleagues and especially any content users whose work might have been impacted by Crown copyright restrictions over the years.

 

Thank you for considering these requests and for your help getting this issue to our MPs as they start a review of the Copyright Act later this year.

 

Government employees: note that your personal information is not disclosed to me or online and that you will have to use a personal email address if you want to sign the petition (which I hope you do!).

 

Thanks.

 

Amanda 

 

Amanda Wakaruk, BCommerce, MLIS, MES

Copyright Librarian and former Government Information Librarian 

[hidden email]

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