“Copyright, put simply, is a personal monopoly on an original writing, song, piece of art, or a group of any of those, for 70 years after the death of the creator. If a corporation is the creator, the copyright monopoly lasts for 95 years.” — Public Knowledge
Did you know, long suffering U.S. taxpayer, that you pay twice for federally funded research?
The first time is when you pay taxes. The federal government uses that money to fund various agencies such as the National Institutes for Health, the National Science Foundation, and others. These agencies then have a vast array of grant programs which then go to all sorts of recipients, including universities and specific academic researchers. If you want a sense of how much of your cash is flowing through this federal subsidy for higher education, you can check out Grants.gov, which was helpfully set up to make it easier for universities and others to apply for your money.
Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that this is money well spent. How do you pay the second time? Well, once that research is conducted, the way that professors and other academics make it available is by publishing it in academic journals. Most of these journals are published by big publishing corporations, they're middlemen who stand between people who want to learn and the research they need to do that learning. As a student, some of your tuition goes to pay off these publishers so that you can have access to journals online (or, if you're not an online student, in paper form in the library).
There's a growing movement, called the Open Access movement, that thinks that this is unfair. They figure that since you paid for the research to be conducted in the first place, that you deserve to actually get what you pay for without enriching corporate publishers. They say that taxpayer money for research should come with the condition that whatever comes of that research should be published online where anyone can read it without paying a second time. There's a bill in Congress right now called the Federal Research Public Access Act to make sure this policy is adopted by Uncle Sam.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Not so fast. As the saying goes, "Invest in America, Buy a Congressman," and in this instance the bought-and-paid-for legislator is Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means committee. He's shamelessly introduced a bill to ensure that you pay twice, with the upside-down name of the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.
While that's pretty nauseating, the very name of that bill showcases a more basic problem here than just corrupt legislators: copyright itself. The point of copyright, as stated in the Constitution, is supposed to be "to promote
the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times
to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective
writings and discoveries". But that's unnecessary in this situation, because that progress of science and useful arts is already being promoted by taxpayer-funded grants.
So what's the solution? Well, by definition, anything that's published by the federal government itself is placed in the public domain, meaning that it isn't copyrighted at all. The idea is that taxpayers have paid for it, so it should be completely available to all people. But the principle is the same with this sort of research. So to me, the Open Access people have the right idea, but they don't go far enough. If federal taxpayers are really going to get their money's worth, then not only material that is federally authored should be in the public domain, but material that is produced thanks to taxpayers' funds should be as well: not just open access, not just eventually free to view with certain restrictions, not copyrighted at all, but in the public domain.
Next up, I have an opportunity to do more course design, and I'm pretty excited about it!