Slides from the presentation made at the Software Freedom Day celebration event in Delhi, organised by Software Freedom Law Centre [sflc.in], on 21st September 2013.
1. Free (or Libre) Knowledge:
Text, Data, Maps
Sumandro Chattapadhyay
The Sarai Programme, CSDS
HasGeek Media LLP
www.ajantriks.net
@ajantriks
2. Free (or Libre) Knowledge
/ Free as in *freedom* ...
/ ... and maybe also as in *lunch*
/ Freedom to study knowledge
/ Freedom to use knowledge
/ Freedom to share knowledge
/ Freedom to create derivative knowledge
and share that
3. The Digital Questions
/ What happens when marginal cost of copying
knowledge is not minimal?
/ Can only digital knowledge be free?
/ Are digital platforms free enough?
/ What's the value of free but inaccessible
or difficult to use knowledge?
4. Free (or Libre) Knowledge: Text
/ Budapest Open Access Initiative
/ Open Access – Gratis and Libre
/ Open Access – Green and Gold
/ BioMed Central, PubMed Central, PLOS
/ DOAJ, OpenDOAR
/ IAS, Shodhganga, and ICAR
/ Open Education Resources
5. Free (or Libre) Knowledge: Budapest OA Initiative
“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to
make possible an unprecedented public good. The old
tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to
publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals
without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge.
The new technology is the internet.
By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free
availability on the public Internet, permitting any users
to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or
link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for
indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for
any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or
technical barriers other than those inseparable from
gaining access to the Internet itself. The only constraint
on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for
copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control
over the integrity of their work and the right to be
properly acknowledged and cited.”
6. Free (or Libre) Knowledge: Guerilla OA Manifesto
“Information is power. But like all power, there are those
who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire
scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and
locked up by a handful of private corporations.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to
come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil
disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft
of public culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make
our copies and share them with the world... We need to
download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing
networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.”
/ Aaron Swartz, July 2008
7. Open Access to Free Knowledge: Data
/ The techno-political pressure groups for
open government data – Tim O'Reilly et al in USA,
and Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt in UK.
/ The eight principles of open data
/ Open Definition
/ Government data portals – USA, UK, etc.
/ National Data Sharing and Accessibility
Policy and <data.gov.in>
/ Michael Gurstein: “empowering the empowered?”
8. Open Access to Free Knowledge: 8 Principles of OGD
/ Data Must Be Complete
/ Data Must Be Primary
/ Data Must Be Timely
/ Data Must Be Accessible
/ Data Must Be Machine processable
/ Access Must Be Non-Discriminatory
/ Data Formats Must Be Non-Proprietary
/ Data Must Be License-free
/ Compliance must be reviewable
9. Open Access to Free Knowledge: Open Definition
A work is open if its manner of distribution satisfies
the following conditions:
/ Access
/ Redistribution
/ Reuse
/ Absence of technological restriction
/ Attribution
/ Integrity
/ No discrimination against persons or groups
/ No discrimination against fields of endeavour
/ Distribution of license
/ License must not be specific to a package
/ License must not restrict the distribution of
other works