As part of its Open Access Week, the University libraries hosted a lecture on Friday by Carl Malamud, an influential Internet advocate who argued for open access to government law and policy.
J.Q. Johnson, the University director of scholarly communications and instructional support, said the week was “an international event that tries to raise awareness of the Open Access movement.”
According to the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Internet makes open access possible through “world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature, completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.”
Malamud has been involved in the Internet since its infancy. He, among other things, started the first Internet radio station and put the Securities and Exchange Commission database online. Currently, he works with the Web site Public.Resource.Org to get government laws and documents online.
“Americans have always had an interest in reading the law,” Malamud said at the beginning of his lecture.
However, Malamud said government, especially state governments, have been stubborn to the point of obfuscation about putting their laws online, even going so far as to copyright them.
“How can we say we’re a nation of law, not a nation of men, if the law is hidden?” Malamud said.
Malamud came to Oregon’s attention when he recently came to the defense of University economics professor Bill Harbaugh. Harbaugh had scanned and uploaded the Oregon Attorney General’s Public Records and Meetings Manual, which the attorney general asserts copyright over and sells for $25, to the Internet.
Malamud uploaded the document to Public.Resources.Org and sent a letter to the attorney general arguing the document could not be copyrighted.
Another example of a “wrongheaded approach” to public documents is the Oregon Fire Marshal, which sells the Oregon Fire Code for $100. An online version of the code can be viewed online, but the document cannot be searched, printed or downloaded.
Last year, Malamud convinced the Oregon state legislature to drop an attempt to copyright the Oregon Revised Statutes.
However, Malamud said that Oregon is not particularly unusual in this regard. He said that 26 states assert some form of copyright over their laws and regulations.
Malamud said that open access to law also serves the public interest by making the statutes more user-friendly.
“Once you take down the fences around public domain, you not only get access, you get innovation.” Malumud said,
As an example, Malamud cited OregonLaws.org, a Web site started by a Lewis & Clark student that catalogs the Oregon Revised Statutes. However, unlike the state of Oregon’s Web site, the statutes are completely searchable, divided by subject and even include secondary sources such as news articles to give context to the statutes.
Most of the other events during Open Access week focused on further developing a scholars bank — an open archive of scholarly articles — at the University, as well as creating free electronic textbooks. Johnson said that one-fifth of all scholarly journals are
currently open access.
For his part, Johnson hopes to keep expanding the Open Access event.
“Last year, we had Open Access Day. This year, we had a whole week. Next year, a whole month!” Johnson said with a laugh.
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