Science and copyright

I swear, in my next post, I’ll give all the details I think I can give (that is, all the details which are set in my head) about my “great” idea for the future of scientific communication. In the meantime, I just want to have a little chat about science and copyright.

Part of the reason I’m going through this thought process and devising this master system (I’d use the word framework, but for personal reasons, I hate the word framework) is that I believe there’s something wrong with how scientists communicate. I’m not saying that scientists are doing everything wrong when it comes to communication. In fact, I think many things scientists do are right! Let me outline this in 3 points:

1. The fundamental spirit of how scientists approach communication is perfect. The open-ness of scientific communication should never change. All scientists I know, not only recognize this fact, but probably worship that principle. I don’t think I’m teaching anyone, anything here.
2. The current use of copyright is dangerous. Basically, we’re going about our business, applying number 1 just above to our results, but giving our copyright away to scientific journals, some of which are looking to use it, as the PRISM initiative shows us.
3. The tools and methods we use to disseminate our scientific results and ideas are outdated and inefficient. This is where my framework idea comes in. I’m really not looking at revolutionizing scientific communication (although I’ll claim it at some point so I make noise and people notice what I’m doing), but rather to evolve it to the next step. The underlying principle (number 1 above) will remain. Only the packaging and the speed at which it traves will change.

Let me discuss points 1 and 2 a little here today. More explicitely, let me depart from the usual and try to take an idea from science and apply that to another field.

In number 1 above, I praise the principle of open-ness of scientific communication. What I’m saying is that the founding principle we use to do science is that anyone can take what I’ve done, scrutinize it, critic it, replicate it (in fact, we’re happy when someone redoes something we’ve done and confirms we’ve done it properly), expand on it, etc. All that scientists ask is that when you re-use what someone’s done, you mention who’s done it first, done it wrong, done it partially. Expressed in this way, it sounds a lot like the attribution creative commons license. What’s a creative commons license?

Simple. The Creative Commons is a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to create lienses which can be used by content creators. These licenses come in different forms, a machine readable form, a lawyer-ese form and a human-speak (for laymen) form. As a content creator, you select which rights you WANT to give to people over your work and you attach the appropriate license to your work. This indicates to potential (re-)users of your work “These are the things you can do with this copyrighted work.”

The attribution license says that you can re-use, use, distribute, mashup (the new buzzword on the internet), remash, paint over, trace over, deform and enjoy the current work. All you have to do is attribute the source properly. This is exactly what we do in science.

One point of clarification though. Legally, copyright extends over EXPRESSIVE WORKS and not over IDEAS AND FACTS. So technically, someone can take your paper, extract the actual data points and re-use that information. Information is not copyrightable. So people don’t even need to attribute the source. In this case, the “science code” goes beyond copyright. When re-using INFORMATION laid out by a previous scientist, we still attribute the source.

On the other hand, there are behaviours scientists exhibit, which don’t respect copyright. For example, we often re-use images from other scientists and only attribute the source. In my master’s thesis, there are images from the phd thesis of a student at Caltech. I still attributed the source, of course. I’m sure I can pull loads of master’s/ph.d. thesis in my field with copies of images from older papers, probably from many recent papers. In the case where one pulls an image DIRECTLY from a copyrighted work and only attributes, one is technically breaking copyright law. Now, I doubt Caltech is going to sue me for using that image (or the copyright holder for that matter, whom I know well enough by now). In the end, using that image and simply attributing the source FEELS right. This is a case where using the creative commons attribution license would work well. This would have enabled me to use the image without worrying about the copyright detail. I still didn’t care, but technically I should have. Were I to be sued, I would argue fair use (as a critic of the work). Still I’m really not likely to be sued by Caltech for this.

This is where my point 2 comes in. We’re using our traditional distribution methods (archival journals and the such), knowing full well that we’re signing our copyright away in most cases, yet without caring about the consequences. Basically, because there have been no real consequences so far. Once in a while, there’s the odd over-zealous journal staff who sees infringiment and sends a letter to the infringer without clearing it with a boss first. Yet, I’m not aware of anyone getting really screwed over this. I’m willing to bet most (all?) scientists are more worried of being discretited because of accusations of plagiarism than because of lawsuits over copyright infringiment.

So in light of this unwritten policy in the scientific domain (we could call it the no-sue poliy), why should we care? While the danger isn’t imminent, groups like PRISM are worrisome. They show that someone, somewhere cares. That person hasn’t used their right yet, but they know it exists. I don’t like the status quo, especially when I’m not in a situation of power. My solution to this is to say that while we devise a system to revamp our distribution methods, let’s take the opportunity to cut-out the middle-man and use licensing schemes which solve this issue. More on this next time.

For now, as promised, let me draw a parallel between what happens in the scientific world and what happens in the music world.

As I outlined above, the way science is done (on a global scale, not on a laboratory scale) is that we constantly re-use, re-hash, re-mash other scientists work. Joe A, in Italy in 1971 publishes a paper which is really interesting. He shows that a species of frogs in Madagascar has the ability to spontaneously change sex. (I’m making this up as I go along now, in case you hadn’t noticed.) Fast-forward to 2002, when Jane B, in South Africa, shows that all frogs have the genetic makeup to do this, it simply happens that only a fraction of those species have the need to use spontaneous sex change. (Again, it’s completely out of thin-air, just an example. I’m pulling this out of the script of a bad science-fiction/cataclysm movie right now.)

In the end, Jane B simply writes in her article that “Joe A has previously shown that…” and maybe pastes in a graph from the original 1971 article, showing the main conclusions. Re-use of previous science to make new science.

What about music? Listen to this clip about the song “Amen Brother”.

Basically, from the sampling of a few seconds of a rather unknown 1969 song, a whole genre of music was born. A spoon-full of copyright infringiment over a bed of creative re-use led to a whole genre of music. In the most basic sense, the birth of hip-hop was basically the same as the evolution of science.

Does the comparison really apply? I would say that it does. Joe A might publish an article with a picture and say, “I have no idea what this means.” Jane B then comes along, realizes what the picture is, scans it from the paper, applies some image transformations to get some features out and say “Ah ah! It is now clear that the large feature in the image from the article of Joe A is …” Remember. FACTS are not copyrightable. EXPRESSIONS OF FACTS are copyrightable. Images are expressions of facts. Scientific images may be argued either way. They’re data, really, we (scientists) wouldn’t differentiate them from raw fact, at least conceptually. But they’re still images. In the modern scientific community, we wouldn’t think twice about this. We might phone up Joe A and say, “Look at this! I’ve figured it out!” Joe A will be happy. And so we’ll publish our new result, with attribution, feeling quite content. Unfortunately, Joe A has signed his copyright away to the international journal of frogs back in 1971. Not too unfortunate, because we don’t really enforce it. In comes PRISM… and I get a little worried. Not that much, but a little. And so I ask, given that we have the technology to solve this problem easily and make our system more efficient, why not?

Now, to give you something to chew on, think about what would happen to science if somehow, we weren’t allowed to re-use other scientists stuff. Think about what would happen if we started suing each others every time re-use occured.

Now, having thought about that for a minute, think about what would have happened to music if every DJ in the 80’s had been sued out of existence?

Consider the approach the mainstream expressive industry is taking to the application of copyright law. The “copyright should last forever and nobody should be allowed to use even a single second of my work withouth paying me” camp. Forward the clip above to the 14:00 mark and listen to what the author considers as the significance of learning the origin of the amen break. When samplers came to light, the industry in place let it slide. They may not have regarded the technology and its uses as viable in any way. Now, copying and sampling possibilities are at everyone’s fingertips. It doesn’t seem they’ll make that “mistake” twice.

Now, what if all musicians agreed to say that “You may reuse portions of my work for the purpose of sampling and creating new expressive works.” How would hip-hop and electronica evolve?

[Update 1: I edited this post to add some links to the PRISM webpage and the Creative Commons website. –CBK]
[Update 2: Fixed link to the youtube video. It seems wordpress’ visual editor doesn’t quite like the embed tag. –CBK