We resume the program. Now we are going to
have the only presentation, which is Eric.
I see that he is already connected.
Can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Okay, I think it works.
Okay, so Eric Stanhower is the head of the University
Library of the Freie Universität in Hagen, Germany.
And he has a background in law, theology,
philosophy, political science and education.
Stanhower focuses on academic rights law, cultural memory
institutions and data protection in the digital area.
He teaches at various universities and he has been
involved in the legislative process on these topics.
He served as a spokesperson for the German Research Oathbook Committee and was
previously involved in the development of the German Research Foundation Code of Conduct.
And now, when you can start for us, we are waiting for you.
Okay, thank you very much for your kind introduction.
I hope everybody can hear me.
So talking about law after coffee break
is a really good idea to snooze a bit off.
And I want to be not so boring and to mention a lot of legal details.
And I see where is my presentation.
Yeah, and the title of my presentation
is really big for roughly 20-25 minutes.
Challenges and strategies for libraries when it comes to open science.
Well, I think it is more about awareness and showing
you some background when it comes to digital content.
And this is very important if we want to develop
our libraries as institutions for open science.
We should not forget the legal issues.
Yesterday, we had a wonderful talk, this presentation from Sweden.
And I searched the national roadmap for open science of Sweden.
And then I found this to provide researchers with affordable, adequate and secure infrastructural
services compliant with the applicable regulatory framework, Data Protection Act and everything else.
So the library is responsible for some safe legal framework.
And in the Open EU strategy, we heard this one mission is
the integration of emerging technologies, including AI.
I want to add emerging technologies and include them, but then we also invite
all the legal problems associated, for example, with artificial intelligence.
And there are lots of lots of legal problems.
So when it comes to open science, one
thing is maybe it is trivial and obvious.
Open science is digital.
This changes everything when it comes to law.
We are moving from book or books, from printed material to content.
And when we are moving to content,
there's a lot of talk about technologies.
Platforms, software devices, fundings and everything else.
But what about the legal consequences of
this shift to the digital environment?
So you see here two people just reading.
Of course, the boy is reading in a printed book and the girl,
I think she's reading some e-book or whatever on her display.
It's just reading.
But when it comes to law.
Both are living in completely different environments and spaces.
So take a book and I have here beside my
desk this nice book and I open this book.
What does it mean when it comes to copyright?
Nothing is just opening a book.
And then I am reading.
Is this something which affects copyright?
I don't think so.
It is just reading.
But when it comes to the same book, but now in an electronic format.
What is opening the book?
Maybe you see some PDF icon or something
else and you're clicking on that icon.
But what is happening then?
The book is open, of course.
This means some data is coming from some server to your device and is stored
there and is displayed and everything what is done here is reproduction.
And when it comes to reproduction, we are in the field of copyright.
And if you are turning a page in a digital
electronic book, it is again a reproduction.
And when you are going to make this book available to a
broader audience, this is making available to the public.
In the old times, we bought books, printed books.
Then we have our library room.
The book which we have bought is our property, our tangible property.
And we can decide which person is allowed to
borrow the book, to read the book, whatever.
But the publisher or the author is not involved
in that because we have decisions on our property.
But when there is no tangible item and only content in networks,
then it is all about reproduction and making available to the public.
And here we are in a completely different
environment when it comes to law.
So a bit legal background.
This is here a European directive.
I don't want to talk about national copyright acts because
we have different national copyright acts in Europe.
But we have a common framework and this
common framework are some European directives.
And one of the very important directive is this directive from 2001.
I think it's the Bronze Age of the Internet or so, 2001.
It is still valid and still very important.
And this is so-called information society directive.
And here you have our common European
framework when it comes to copyright.
And you see here three so-called exploitation rights.
See the right of reproduction, the right of making
available to the public and the right of distribution.
When it comes to printed material, the right of
distribution is, we say, exhausted when you buy the book.
That means the publisher, the author cannot decide what to do with
this item you have bought because this is your tangible property.
So no copyright issues when it comes to printed books.
But if there's digital content, there is no tangible item.
There is no distribution in the sense of copyright.
There's only reproduction and making available to the public.
And here, even if you pay money for the content, there is no exhaustion.
So you have some license contract and then you can see
in the license contract what you can do with the content.
What is allowed? Can you share it online and how many people can read?
And with every publisher, with every
item, the license could be different.
So it is very hard to decide what to do with the digital content.
So it's not this easy world, this easy analog world.
It is more complicated in the digital world.
So what can we do? Again, here, the legal background, exhaustion.
You see this when it comes to tangible items.
But this is not the case when we have digital content.
We then have only exceptions or
limitations in the law or we have licenses.
So this is the ground we have to stand on and we have to know about.
When we are talking about digital content,
what can we do with digital content?
Is only that what is granted through an exception
or limitation in the law, the Copyright Act,
or it is agreed in the license with a
publisher or some other rights holders.
So when it comes to exceptions and limitations.
We have to look into the Copyright Act
and there maybe we find some exception
which allows us to do something with digital content.
For example, digitize older books which
are no more available on the market
and of which I don't know the right holders.
So-called orphan works, then I can do
some digitization and other things.
The talks in this conference, as far as I have seen them,
were much about up-to-date publications.
And when it comes to science and engineering,
then we are talking about open science and open publications.
We have newer publications and we have a digital working environment.
Everything is fine.
But when it comes to the humanities, older material is very relevant.
And when we would like to construct a
really open digital working environment,
we have to digitize a lot of this old
material and make this accessible.
So we have to look into the law and see some exceptions or limitations.
Otherwise, we have to negotiate and get some licenses.
So exceptions and limitations on the
one hand and licenses on the other hand.
These are the two ways we have when we are asking,
are we allowed to use digital content in an open way?
So what are the consequences?
We want to build a library service for open science
and we want to provide digital content.
But to reach our plannings and our hopes and expectations,
we need on the one hand exceptions in the law.
Maybe we have them.
If not, this is a political debate we should then do.
And if there is no exception in the
law, then we have to go to the licenses.
And here, one very important model are the Creative Commons licenses.
We can use for material which is not yet in the hand of big publishers.
We have heard a lot about rights retention policies.
This is the way not to give your rights away,
but to build a quite robust legal
framework using Creative Commons licenses.
So everything is quite easy, manageable.
This is fine.
But there was one question, one very interesting question.
What about Creative Commons license and
training of artificial intelligence?
What if I do not want this?
So sometimes those licenses have to meet new
challenges and we have to seek some answers.
So it is an ongoing challenge to have a good legal framework
when we use licenses for open science.
Copyright is very important.
I am now in the field of legal debates for more than 20 years.
And 15 years, even 10 years previously, it
was only copyright we were talking about.
And libraries were very strong also in this debate.
But now personal data are also very important.
We have this common European framework, the GDPR.
And yeah, what about personal data when it comes to open science?
What about digitization of newspapers?
And you find a lot of names in this.
And maybe some news are not very, very nice.
And a person could come to the library and say,
oh, please, I have here in the European
regulation the right to be forgotten.
Please remove that scan.
What can we do?
Lots of things.
And we have personal data, but there's also just data.
We have now this European data strategy
and we have a lot of European legislation,
for example, Data Governance Act or older legislation
like public sector information directives.
There are some obligations what to do with your research data,
making them available and under specific conditions.
So we have to know all these regulations when we build,
when you want to build open science services as a library.
You see here the Data Governance Act is a quite new European legislation.
And here you find or you can find the fair principles.
We I think yesterday somebody mentioned also the fair data principles.
And this is European law.
And if there are research data produced with public money,
we have to meet the fair principles and making data accessible.
It's also a question about the legal framework under which conditions.
Yeah, you would say, OK, legal framework is important.
This fine.
Then we can ask the lawyer.
The bad news is this is not the way how it works,
because the lawyers.
Very often do not know a very good answer.
It's like moving your car in the traffic
and you are approaching the traffic light and you see the yellow light.
What are you going to do?
You can stop or you can accelerate and move on.
And normally the lawyers say, oh, it's safer to stop.
And a lot of questions we have in when it comes
to open science are this yellow light questions.
It's not very clear if what we can do.
The thing is, we are using we want to use new technologies.
But if a technology is new, the legal
framework, the written law is quite old.
And this law does not know this new technology.
So we have to interpret the law and we have to ask questions to the law.
And if you are asking questions, you can ask
two lawyers and you will get three answers.
So if we want to move quickly forward with new technology,
we have to be part of this legal discussion ourselves.
The thing is, if there is no legal
discussion and when it comes to the courts
and when there's some legal conflict, what are the judges doing?
They are looking into the written law
and sometimes they will find nothing because the law is quite old.
So they look into the literature.
And this is very important that there is
some discussion about how to use the law
we have when it comes to open science and to open libraries.
So we must be part of this discussion if we want to have good results.
When it comes to copyright, this was very successful.
But I think now when we have so much legislation in the data law,
I see so little engagement from
librarians and from people on the sector.
Rising questions, asking questions and solving questions,
discussing solutions for our legal problems.
But this is important to have this discussion with us
when we are building an open science space
because nobody else will do this work for us.
So what are the steps?
We should identify the legally relevant areas of open science.
And then we should see, OK, what is the situation
and maybe we can do some political work
to have better regulations in the law.
But otherwise we have to discuss also these legal topics with lawyers,
be active in publishing and raising these questions
to have in the end a really good discussion and a really good practice.
I think this rights retention policy is some sort of this thinking
because when you have a very dogmatic
approach, there are lots of questions.
But what are you doing is some kind of risk approach.
So it is more than it is like a power play.
So we have here the money, we have the content,
you are the publisher and these are our conditions.
OK, and let's see how far it goes.
And this is a good way to do things.
So this is my conclusion and I want to share this with you.
Please do not forget the law, no matter how interesting
and compelling the new technology is and how interesting the idea
and the vision of open science is without a legal framework,
you will have some nasty problems and not good results.
Thank you very much for your attention.
And I would like to have some discussion.
We have a time.
So please ask questions if you like,
and I will try to answer if possible.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Eric.
[Speaking Spanish]
One second, we are looking for the microphone.
Thank you for your talk, Eric.
I had a question on the sentence on secondary
publication rights and the university constance.
Could you briefly comment on that one, please?
Thank you.
As far as I know, we have no result.
It is still at the Supreme Court.
It's a constitutional court and there is no result yet.
The thing is, this...
Okay, maybe I should explain the background
because not everybody knows what is this.
We have in some legislation on the state level, you know,
Germany is a federal state with a lot of states on the state level,
in the state Baden-Württemberg, where cities like Freiburg,
Konstanz, Tübingen, Heidelberg and so on are.
We have in this Act for universities some provision.
If you have the right to republish
your work in the green way of access,
you have to republish if the work is funded by public money.
And the law faculty of one university,
this university of Konstanz was against this regulation
and the faculty went to the court.
One important step, the law, the university Act says
this obligation can be imposed by a university.
So one university must do this on university level
and this university of Konstanz did this,
it was the one only university who did this.
So the law faculty was against this and they went to the court
and the court said, "Oh, it's a matter of constitutional law,
but not when it comes to is there a right or obligation of open access."
The question was very formal because the
court said, "Oh, this is regarding copyright
and for copyright only the federal
level is competent to do legislation, not the states.
"
And with that question, they went to the constitutional court
and now the case is there for years and there's no decision.
Maybe one background, I think the people of the law faculty
are the only people who earning money when publishing with publishers.
So they like their publisher.
So if you are publishing a legal paper in Germany,
you will have, I think, some 300 to 500 Euros for one paper.
So this is quite nice.
So you like your publisher and why this open access model?
And there's also one difficulty when it comes to law.
Law, of course, is a university discipline,
but there are also a lot of authors there from
practitioners like lawyers, judges, and so on.
And they are, especially the lawyers,
they are earning money with publishing and also with the knowledge.
So there is really a market for this kind of information.
It is different than this is other.
It is not so in the humanities, for example.
So open access rules in this market are a bit different
than open access rules maybe in the humanities.
But the legal question is a really technical question.
It is about who is competent to rule this.
Is it copyright law or is it just university law?
University law, you can rule on the state level
and copyright law, you only can rule on the federal level.
We hope that the constitutional court will also say something
about freedom of, about academic freedom and open access
to have some orientation for our discussions.
We will see.
So everybody is waiting for this decision.
[PAUSE]
¿Una pregunta más en El auditorio?
[PAUSE] ¿No?