Month: June 2013

The public sector produces and preserves a significant amount of information. The accessibility and re-usability of the same by the private sector is today a strategic resource of growing and extraordinary value.

The European Parliament on 13th June last gave the go-ahead, with some changes, to the proposal for the amendment of Directive 2003/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 17th November 2003, on the reuse of public sector information.

In the cultural sector, the proposal to amend the Directive, which at this stage should be implemented in the Member States within two years, could have a major economic impact, making valuable content available for commercial use. Europe is a treasure trove of a thousand of years of culture and creation, so making its use and enjoyment freer is an opportunity that could make a difference to the Old Continent.

The wording of the new Directive is – as usual – the result of some compromises that do not make it any easier to read, however, for the publishing industry, especially the digital one, I note these points that are covered by the upcoming legislative changes:

– The reusability of documents held by public bodies should become the rule and non-reusability the exception;

– The scope of the previous Directive has been extended (with its requirement for accessibility and reusability of documents) to libraries (including those at universities), museums and public archives.

–  “To facilitate reuse, public sector bodies should, where possible and appropriate, make documents available through open and machine-readable formats and together with their metadata, at the best level of precision and granularity, in a format that ensures interoperability”

– In principle, the cost of reproduction of documents to be reused and charged to users should not exceed the “marginal cost” of the reproduction in question;

– What remains strong is what is already provided in the area of “licenses”: the public may submit the reuse of documents to licensing, but the licenses must be provided in “standard” and “digitised” formats. What is important in this respect is the following principle (i.e. “Considering” in the preamble to the Directive): “(26) In relation to any re-use that is made of the document, public sector bodies may impose conditions, where appropriate through a licence, such as acknowledgment of source and acknowledgment of whether the document has been modified by the re-user in any way. Any licences for the re-use of public sector information should in any event place as few restrictions on re-use as possible, for example limiting them to an indication of source. Open licences available online, which grant wider re-use rights without technological, financial or geographical limitations and relying on open data formats, should play an important role in this respect. Therefore, Member States should encourage the use of open licences that should eventually become common practice across the Union”.

– Exclusivity agreements relating to the digitisation of analogue documents held by libraries, museums, archives, etc. should not exceed a period of 10 years (but for exclusive arrangements already in place for digitization, the Directive allows certain exemptions). In essence, after 10 years, the digitized content that is in the public domain also becomes so in digitized form.

– The Directive does not adversely affect the intellectual property rights system in force which is applicable to the documents in question (both for third party rights and those of public bodies subject to the obligations of access and reusability covered by the Directive).

Now, as we can see, the intentions are good, but we will need to see the actual methods of implementation at national level. I would remind you here that the Guidelines do not create rules which are directly and uniformly applicable in the national legal systems. The Member States need to transpose them by introducing them into their own legislation, linked to the Directive in the goals to be achieved.

For a more detailed analysis, please read Ton Zijlstra and Janssen Katleen in their blog at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

The European and International Booksellers Federation has commissioned a study on interoperability of digital formats of ebooks, now also available online (On the Interoperability of eBook Formats; Prof. Christoph Bläsi | Prof. Franz Rothlauf, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz – Germany).

Interoperability means doing with the ebook what you do with regular books: reading them how and where you want.

The EPUB 3 format delivers increased interoperability. The problem is not the technology of the formats, but (a) proprietary formats, which generate closed “ecosystems”, (b) the DRM that protect those ecosystems.

Even with DRM, interoperability is possible. Even here, therefore, the problem is one of wanting it, not one being able to obtain it.

The study looks at the two systems that dominate the market: those of Amazon and Apple.. They, for now, call the shots and dictate how and where we can read regularly purchased ebooks (what we are buying from them, however, is not that clear).

A passage from the preface by Neelie Kroes (Vice-President of the European Commission, in charge of the Digital Agenda) can be taken on trust:

“Interoperability is a major requirement to build a truly digital society. This applies to ebooks too. When you buy a printed book it’s yours to take where you like. It should be the same with an ebook. You can now open a document on different computers, so why not an ebook on different platforms and in different apps? One should be able to read one’s ebook anywhere, any time on any device”.

From the website of the Stanford Law Review, written by Clark Asay, on the recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the subject of “first-sale doctrine” for second-hand books printed and lawfully purchased abroad, and re-imported into the USA.

“The Court held six to three that the first-sale doctrine allows importing physical books, lawfully made and acquired abroad, into the United States for resale without violating a copyright owner’s distribution right.”

The extension of the solution to ebooks is doubtful.

For ebooks purchased from the online services of the usual suspects, is there a first sale or are we all licensees?

The issue is hot, let’s hear from you!

Amazon has applied to ICANN for assignment of the registry for management of the TLD “.book” (and other TLDs, such as “.author”).

If the request is accepted it would end up managing the top-level domain .book. The assignment procedure is still in progress. The preliminary assessment of applications by ICANN should be completed by the summer. Amazon is not the only company to have applied for the award of the TLD domain “.book”.

As stated in the request made ​​to ICANN, Amazon would manage the TLD “.book” “in support of the business aims of Amazon“. Therefore, as far as we understand it, the subdomains (such as amazon.book) would be distributed only to Amazon itself and its subsidiaries. In addition, “All domains in the .BOOK registry will remain the property of Amazon“.

This means that the TLD in question would be a “closed” domain, not open to requests for registration of second-level domains by third parties, as is the case for the “.com” domain.

Some competitors have come out against the assignment of the domain as a “closed” domain, (such as Barnes & Nobles, for example), as well as various associations and institutions.

In general, if ICANN assigns the management of the registry of generic domain names (like “.libro”, “.car” etc.) to persons or companies who propose not to allow third parties to have access to the subdomain of the first level domain, this could facilitate the creation of dominant positions in the economic sectors relating to the generic name in question.

Thus in the case the .book domain, the danger would be that it strengthens the market power of an operator which is already very strong in the distribution of books and ebooks.

The strengthening or creation of dominant positions of the TLDs in the markets concerned (especially those with generic names in the process of assignment) also reflects the dominant position of ICANN itself in the market of the assignment of management of registries for TLDs.

In short, the perennial battle between cases of “closing” and “opening” of the network and its infrastructure remains current and every day seems to be given a new chapter.