As speed geeking is, well, geeky, we should consult the ultimate web geek source Wikipedia for a definition:

A large room is selected as the speed geeking venue. All the presenters are arranged in a large circle along the edge of the room. The remaining members of the audience stand at the center of the room. Ideally there are about 6-7 audience members for each presenter. One person acts as the facilitator.

The facilitator rings a bell to start proceedings. Once proceedings start, the audience splits up into groups and each group goes to one of the presenters. Presenters have a short duration, usually 5 minutes, to give their presentation and answer questions. At the end of the five minutes, the facilitator rings a bell. At this point, each group moves over to the presenter to their right and the timer starts once more. The session ends when every group has attended all the presentations.

One of the presentations that I would like to see — either at a speed geek for open access to law or for another event — is someone describing Open Journal Systems. OJS is an open source software platform for journals created and maintained by the Public Knowledge Project.

It isn’t just a website for your journal:

OJS Features

1. OJS is installed locally and locally controlled.
2. Editors configure requirements, sections, review process, etc.
3. Online submission and management of all content.
4. Subscription module with delayed open access options.
5. Comprehensive indexing of content part of global system.
6. Reading Tools for content, based on field and editors’ choice.
7. Email notification and commenting ability for readers.
8. Complete context-sensitive online Help support.

This is the kind of think that can greatly improve open access to law in the UK. There are many open access law journals that use home grown software and spend time reinventing the wheel. This kind of effort can be saved and spent where it matters — high quality content available under an open access policy.

I’d also like to see speed geek booths on:

• Open content licensing — making sure that the journal doesn’t maintain restrictive copyright policies.
• User reps — people from outwith the legal profession and the academe that want access to law articles.
• Open access — someone to discuss the benefits of open access policies.
• Roll your own open access — someone discussing self archiving and sites like SSRN.
• Successful open access journals — success stories from current open access UK law journals.

I’m sure that you can think of some others. Interested? Leave a comment or contact me.

Knowledge Politics Quarterly

The journal describes itself as:

Knowledge Politics Quarterly (KPQ) is an academic journal produced by the think-tank Knowledge Politics. It is edited by Craig Berry (Department of Politics, University of Sheffield). KPQ publishes original articles by established scholars, graduate students and non-academic practitioners. The topics covered by KPQ include the media, the internet, broadcasting, technological development, the social, political and economic implications of ICTs – in terms of theory, policy or practice

They accept “anything ranging from 3000-word ‘opinion’ pieces and 10,000-word+ empirically-based articles” with 8000 words generally recommended.

Though it doesn’t appear that they have a journal policy on publishing under an open content licence, their copyright policy does allow for its use:

Authors retain all copyrights at all times, and as such are free to publish their articles in other fora. KPQ also accommodates the use of ‘Creative Commons’ licenses.

The one article I downloaded (see below) Fred Flagg, “The Academic Library and the Commons” (no mention of Creative Commons or copyright issues) merely had the (c) symbol and no use of an open content licence. Thus readers can only expect to exercise their fair dealing rights and whatever rights may be implied by being in a webjournal.

Based on their first issue, they appear to only offer the articles as PDF files and not as webpages, which is a little curious because this makes the journal that much less accessible to its readers (and to search engines).

The first issue (October 2007) contains:

_____

Editorial

Notes on contributors

ARTICLES:

Robert Hassan PhD
Temporalized Democracy and a Future Politics

Laura Kyrke-Smith
Information Intervention and the Case of Kosovo: Realising the Responsibility to Protect

Claudia Magallanes-Blanco PhD and Leandro Rodriguez Medina
A Feminist-Dialogical Analysis of Independent Video-Makers on the Indigenous Zapatista Rebellion

Alberto Masetti-Zannini
Web 2.0 and International Development NGOs

OPINION:

Fred Flagg
The Academic Library and the Commons

BOOK REVIEW:

Laura White
Information and Communication Technologies for Development and Poverty Reduction edited by Maximo Torero and Joachim von Braun (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006)

OwnTerms is designed as a repository for “boilerplate” legal documents: those that every web site, startup, or entrepreneur needs but doesn’t want to draft in a lawyer for.

All the documents on OwnTerms are licensed under a Creative Commons license, enabling anyone to take them and edit them for their own use provided certain conditions are met.

A privacy policy that I drafted for the Personality Rights Database and then later adapted to my WordPress blog websites (twitchgamer and opencontentlawyer) is now up as Privacy Policy2 and is available here.

The policy is in the public domain, but if you’d like the comfort of a CC licence, then please use the CC-BY Scotland licence.

All of this is of course with the usual caveat — I am actually a lawyer but I’m not YOUR lawyer. This form is not legal advice.

It has an extremely informal End User Licence Agreement (EULA). I particularly like the  indemnification clause and the choice of law and jurisdiction clause:

You will pay us any costs and damages we suffer if you do something you’re not allowed to. This would include the costs of our legal types. As we are proud to be a Scottish based project, this agreement will be under Scots law and enforced in the Scottish courts.

I also like this description of the educational restriction:

You can only use the material for educational purposes, so don’t go selling it on e-Bay. Beyond the fact that it is illegal, it is also not very nice.

I hope to find out in the project if they considered a Creative Commons like licence for their content. The EULA and their separate copyright policy restricts the use of the content outside of the educational setting and specifically prohibits placing any of the files on a page accessible to the internet.

Brown, Abbe E. L. , Guadamuz, Andres L. and Hatcher, Jordan S., “The Impact of Free Trade Agreements on Information Technology Based Business” (April 15, 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=984864

Abstract:
This report considers the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and its impact on Information Technology (IT) based businesses. The report summarises the factual background to, and contents of, the agreement, and then reviews those parts of the agreement (or omissions from the agreement) that are relevant to the IT field. IT is of interest both because of its potential importance as a contributor to business (and social) growth, but also because of the lesser international roles accorded to it in comparison with its sister, intellectual property (IP). The IT-related provisions of DR-CAFTA reflect international IT (and IP) controversies. But DR-CAFTA also raises questions of the place of agreements between states, their legal validity and their impact upon international relationships and global development.

The primary objective of this project was to explore the extent to which DR-CAFTA impacts upon IT based businesses; the implications of this; to assess how much these issues, and associated economic and legal questions, had been addressed; and to lay the foundations for further legal and interdisciplinary work. We have not, at this stage, explored all the issues covered and not covered in DR-CAFTA, and arising in respect of other agreements of this nature. Rather, we have sought to introduce the issues, provide preliminary comment, and provide a list of resources for further study. We hope that this will be helpful to those coming to the project from a variety of backgrounds, including different legal specialities.

We have concluded that there are important issues to be developed regarding all free trade agreements and IT. These issues are highlighted in the following sections. In terms of immediate further work, we propose investigating the present and future impact of UDRP provisions in DR-CAFTA countries, and liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). We believe that these can raise important questions combining IT, e-commerce, IP, trade, human rights and competition issues; both for DR-CAFTA countries and those contemplating their own agreements. We also consider that there is a need for international and interdisciplinary collaboration for this work to be done, including through empirical research with ISPs and domain name owners. We propose holding an international meeting of experts. As a preliminary step, we are also publishing this report in Spanish.

Progress has been shared on the project blog, http://freetrade.opencontentlaw.org throughout, and we have been delighted with the interest expressed from a variety of corners. We anticipate this report being transformed into a wiki and for further contributions to be developed via web-based. We hope to maintain the project’s momentum through the wiki, and details of this will be posted on the blog.

This project was one of the final activities of Phase 1 of the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the University of Edinburgh (AHRC Research Centre). We are grateful to the AHRC for their support, and look forward to pursuing parts of this work in Phase 2.

SCRIPT-ed is the online journal of the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law based in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh. The Centre was established on 1 April 2002 with generous support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The Centre continues the work of SCRIPT – the Scottish Centre for Research in Intellectual Property and Technologies – which was established by its co-Directors, Professor Hector MacQueen, Ms Lilian Edwards, Dr Graeme Laurie, and Dr Charlotte Waelde in 1998. Andres Guadamuz joined the team in 2002 as a co-Director of the AHRC Centre; Nadine Eriksson-Smith joined as the Centre’s Administrator.

For those of you looking to boost their RAE, we have slots for articles to be published within the next two issues.

Notes for Authors looking to submit.