- This interview was first published (in Dutch) in Pictogram, 2005, vol. 3.
The Dutch version can be found here (in PDF) [PDF].
By Frank den Hollander and Kristien Piersma
Esther Hoorn is project manager of Truth or DARE, which challenges legal scientists to archive their scientific publications digitally, in a repository. This has implications for copy right.
I was born in the new Dutch Polders, in Lelystad; a pioneer by birth. After high school in Rotterdam I studied Law in Leiden. There I worked at the University, the Ministery of Justice and at the bar.
I then lived in Brabant for a while and worked in a managerial position at a mail sorting centre; a most beautiful information processing business. Eventually I continued my legal career at the University of Groningen.
My job is information specialist at the University Library. Nowadays the trend at Universities is to employ people from the faculty to create a bridge between the world of the library and the faculty, both for research and for education. I like working at the University and the freedom that it gives you. I started as lecturer in penal law and ran a lot of tutorials. Because I was interested in Information and Computer Technology I became involved in computerised education. I run projects in the area of e-learning. As a library we have set ourselves the goal to have a strong trajectory on information skills enbedded in the legal education. I realised that legal students learn very little about the enormous amount of know-how the library has on how to use sources. This really is not acceptable, as law is a very information-intensive study.
I am also responsible for creating an electronic collection. We have the Groningen Internet Law Library (GILL) which provides the opportunity for legal libraries to draw attention to topical issues and to open up reliable sites. I spoke to the president of the committee Stolker, who monitors the quality of the legal research and he said how good it is that the libraries work together in this. The reality of being oriented towards service provision can be a bit dull, but that collaboration exists, while the faculties compete with each other. That’s also great in the DARE project; you work together with people of all sorts of other library organisations. That’s why I truly believe that libraries can argue a case with repositories. Where is Science heading? Because science has a public function; it’s financed publicly.
Repositories
This year I have been working on the project Truth or DARE, to challenge legal scientists to make choices about having their work electronically accessible by the public by publishing it in a repository. I went to explain this story in the fellow meeting of our research school CRBS, when I was interrupted by a smart guy in State Law: "Repositories, what are they actually?" Being wary of defining things from a legal perspective I looked around me and then saw in that room a large cupboard with the word "ARCHIVES". I used that cupboard as an example of how repositories are a technological infrastructure that allows information to be opened up. I went on to explain how there is a whole Open Access movement that advocates that Universities themselves have the technology to make things accessible. But I liked that cupboard so much, that we took a photo of it for the Truth or DARE brochure. And when we did that the real surprise was that instead of being filled with archives, the cupboard was full of graduation robes. That was a beautiful metaphore; collectively managing your output, but at the same time wondering who is wearing the robe? Those issues of quality; is someone good enough? These repositories are now sparking a discussion about copyright. A short while ago I was speaking for medical librarians about Open Access and repositories. There someone of the Heart Foundation wanted to make all the research they finance available on their site. So: people have an interest in research that has been funded with public finance and other scientists are interested. Can this be done?
This new medium, the internet has come into existance and legally the issue now is how to regulate its use. Scientists need to be challenged to think about what they want to share, and how and with whom. Universities have the technology to facilitate this process. I see these repositories not as a goal, but as a means. The challenge with filesharing, where data are downloaded, is that nowadays you end up with the end user. If a book was illegally copied in the olden days, you could prosecute the illegal printer. But a copy of a downloaded song you find with the end user.
Historically copyright had two functions. One is, to assure that the producer of the work can feed his or her children. If someone spends a year writing a book, a publisher can pay him. On the other hand, why do we support this form of intellectual property? Because we think that by helping the writer exploit his creativity we advance our culture. This provides a balance; economic right of exploitation versus the concern that people publish and share their creative work. It’s the exclusive right of the producer of a work to copy it or publish it, but if you read on in copy right law, there are all sorts of limitations.
User empowerment
In Truth or DARE we support the strategy of User Empowerment. It says "you have the copyright, you decide what you want to do with your work". At the moment you still see many scientists handing over their work to a publisher. Why is that? They are not like the person who wrote that book who had no other income and needed a publisher to get paid. But people at the University have a publically funded salary. Scientists don’t need to feed their children from the proceeds of their research. For them the copyright has little value, so they can pass it on easily. I think what’s interesting with Open Access is that you tell the scientists that their work does have value, and that they limit themselves if they don’t publish their research. When your work is available via Google it becomes much more frequently cited, your name and fame grows, and you get more say into which research areas you wish to expand. I think that what restrains many scientists at the moment is that they are not known. That’s why "Cream of Science" with lots of examples of usually well known scientists who have published their work is also such an excellent project. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University posted at item called "never again" the other day in his blog. He said he wouldn’t pass on his copyright anymore. And what happened? The next day he received an adjusted contract, because publishers don’t actually need that exclusive right to everything. They just need to be able to publish that article at that moment, when it’s topical, or an interesting collection. But it’s fine if just a week later it’s available for public access. So if scientists are clear about wishing to keep certain rights, for instance to make the research available on a repository, then that is possible and technically workable.
Technology regulates
I find that basic idea of user empowerment, where the middlemen are out of the picture, a good strategy. The big American example is the Creative Commons, which concerns the fact that technology has a regulating power. How can we leave space for a public domain to offer the things people wish to share. It’s absurd that you have the technology to share everything, and yet there are frictions. With the Creative Commons the film industry was accused of maintaining a monopoly. Now a similar initiative was instigated called "Science Commons". I love that! They want to work within the boundaries of copyright, because regulations are not only made with legal rules, but also with arrangements and technique, i.e., the repositories. We have lost the battle that Universities should keep the copy right, and rightly so. Now we offer also with a proper use of copy rights for scholarly use, i.e. public knowledge sharing technology. In regard to arrangements about copyright, it’s your mortgaged house, your appointment is paid for with public money and you serve a public cause. So take responsibility and decide which arrangements you want to make with your publisher, and what you want for the end user. Technically it’s all possible!
With Creative Commons licenses it’s not a matter of "pass on the information and who cares what the public does with it". The Commons metaphore comes from the pastures without an owner in the history of the U.K. But in cyberspace we can govern the public domain. The technology is at a stage that things can be standardised and organised so that arrangements can be made. I wrote an article for students in Groningen called "Quoting properly is something you can learn" which anyone now can reference via the repository and re-use with a share-alike licence. If you wish to publish a hardcopy of your thesis then you arrange with your publisher that the end user doesn’t get the right of commercial re-use. The most important standard for scientific use will probably be the licence in which the scientist who builds on the work of someone else is obliged to provide that person’s name (by attribution). You already see that demand in legal limitations in copyright law.
What does all of this mean for scientists?
Many scientists are thrilled that the search options have increased so drastically in the last few years. They have access to so much information, they hardly appreciate the problem that repositories addresses. It’s a complex issue that you can really only truly appreciate from a more abstract perspective. Often it’s regarded as an economic problem: we pay to much for databanks. There’s also the issue of exclusion of the less well-off parts of the world. Not surprisingly the first repository in DARE addresses Africa studies. In Truth or DARE we collaborate with Maastricht, Tilburg and Utrecht, and it’s going well. The subject is generating more and more enthusiasm. In Tilburg lawyers were most interested in participating in the "Cream of Science", and the fact that the Nederlands Juristenblad is introducing peer review suggests that people are realising that the responsibility for quality control is with the scientists themselves! Someone of European Law said he would use ERPA, a discipline oriented repository for European legal research with quality control, if he wished to publish something with Open Access. I looked it up, and found the Jean Monnet Working Papers Series, with on the first page Quality Control Policy: "Joseph Weiler, who tenures the Jean Monnet professorial reads all contributions and, if necessary invites others to assess". That was all! How do you regulate values? Anyway, Wolters Kluwer are dependent on commercial law offices for 85% of their income. Of course they don’t just give that away in an Open Access model. Kluwer is also a publisher who in principal says no, or at least who doesn’t appear to have a clear policy with regards to self-archiving. But now researchers say they just delete certain articles in that arrangement. Of course; they are arrangements. Lawyers are cautious, which is why I consciously chose such a confronting title for this project: You have to make choices.
Socially
My interest is principally the social operation of ICT, the possibility that it connects people. While cycling to this interview I was thinking how as a child I was never interested in money, and I still am not. My brother loved the Beatles and Frank Zappa and spent his money on records. I only had one record of Simon and Garfunkel that I played on my little plastic record player. I know from my daughter that you can get involved in culture by (file)sharing. She downloads Kazaa. She doesn’t upload, that’s illegal, but she downloads, and I’m glad she does!
