Editorial

Back to the Future: Regulation of Virtual Worlds
Andrés Guadamuz, pp.242-245
Peer-Reviewed Articles

The European Regulation on Biometric Passports: Legislative Procedures, Political Interactions, Legal Framework and Technical Safeguards
Gerrit Hornung, p.246-262

Taking Sides on Technology Neutrality
Chris Reed, pp.263-284

Analysis

Copyright and research: an archivangelist’s perspective
A. A. Adams, p.285-290

Book Reviews

European Plant Intellectual Property
by Margaret Llewelyn and Mike Adcock
Reviewed by Colm Brannigan, pp.291-294

The New Legal Framework for E-Commerce in Europe
Edited by Lilian Edwards
Reviewed by TJ McIntyre, pp.295-297

Thoughts on drafting an open data licence

One of the areas that I will be posting on in the next couple of weeks is open data. My latest project is to re-draft an existing open data licence into a format for worldwide use, much in the same vein of Creative Commons.

If you have an interest in open data, please contact me. More details to follow.

Use of open content licences by cultural heritage organisations

The Eduserv Foundation is funding a study into the use of Creative Archive, Creative Commons and similar open content licences by cultural heritage organisations in the United Kingdom. The study is being led by legal consultant Jordan Hatcher of opencontentlawyer.com. The survey is available here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=L3x_2b1lQJxqu7KdfK587AeA_3d_3d

This survey is open to UK-based cultural heritage organisations such as museums, libraries, galleries, archives, film and video organisations, broadcasters, and other organisations that conduct cultural heritage activities.

The goal of this study is to provide information on the actual use of Creative Archive, Creative Commons, and similar licences. This information will be useful to decision makers and interested professionals in the cultural heritage sector, and for local and national government and the HE and FE sector. The study will be conducted from now through to the middle of September and a report will be made available in October.

If you are a member of a cultural heritage organisation, whether or not you currently use Creative Commons or Creative Archive licences (or even know what they are!), your participation is needed to make this study a success.

Again, the survey is available at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=L3x_2b1lQJxqu7KdfK587AeA_3d_3d

==iPod Shuffle giveaway==

As a bonus for completing the survey, respondents will get the chance to enter a drawer to win one of three iPod Shuffles that come pre-loaded with music! See the survey for full details.

Blog and email — Please help spread the word

We would appreciate it very much if you could help publicise this survey by blogging about it or forwarding this email to people who you think might be interested.

More about the project

You can learn more about the project and read the original research proposal at our homepage:

http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/studies/cc2007

If you would like to take part via post or telephone, or are interested in finding out more about the study, please contact Ed Barker and Jordan Hatcher at

cc-study AT eduserv.org.uk
–or–
phone +44 (0) 125 474328

So what does everyone think about organising some sort of meetup of Open Rights Group supporters and like-minded folk in Scotland?  We’ve been discussing it a bit on the ORG-Discuss list, but I wanted to also post my thoughts here as well.

It looks like it will be in Edinburgh, in July. Preferably on a Thursday about 6 or so (maybe later).  Either the 5th or the 19th.

If you are interested post in the comments or contact me directly via the contacts page.

Snapshot and case-studies of current usage of Creative Commons (and other open content) licences by cultural heritage organisations in the UK

The goal of this study is to provide information on the actual use of Creative Commons
licences for decision makers and interested professionals in the cultural heritage sector, local and national government, and the Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) sector.  The study will be conducted from now through the middle of August, with the final report for the first phase completed in September.

If you are a member of a cultural heritage organisation (whether or not you use Creative Commons), your participation is needed to make this study a success!  Please contact Ed Barker at Ed [dot] Barker -at- eduserv [dot] org [dot] uk or me at jordan -at- opencontentlawyer [dot] com  The survey will take a limited amount of time and will be conducted primarily over the internet. The public portion will begin sometime in late July.

Earlier post on study.

Official website of the study.

Study proposal (PDF).

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.

Ghufran Sukkaryeh, a PhD student of Professor Hector MacQueen’s, whose topic is affiliated to the work of the AHRC Research Centre seeks assistance with some research into copyright in museums and galleries. We would be grateful if you could complete the questionnaire available at:
https://www.survey.ed.ac.uk/ghufransurvey/, if relevant to your area of
work. If you have colleagues within the museums and galleries sectors, it
would be helpful if you could forward this email to ensure as wide a
response rate as possible.

For background, the questionnaire forms a part of a PhD research under the title of “The Impact of Copyright on Museums and Galleries”. Data gathered from the questionnaire seeks to examine the position and value of copyright in museums and galleries. Furthermore, it aims to identify copyright problems in these institutions, how these should be tackled, and how the law should respond to their needs as cultural institutions in the age of technology.