Tag Archives: Erik Stokstad

Colombia, copyright, and sharing a science thesis

You’d think that posting a thesis online while giving full attribution to the author would be considered laudable. Apparently, there’s one person in Colombia that disagrees. And, since many educational institutions ask for copies of a student’s thesis for inclusion in their academic libraries you might believe the making said thesis more widely available (most students would be thrilled at the attention to their work) wouldn’t pose a problem. Apparently the Colombia legal system disagrees as it is preparing to take a student to court (and possible to jail) for sharing scientific information.

While the story seems to be popping up everywhere, this Aug. 1, 2014 article by Kerry Gren for The Scientist acted as my first notice (Note: Links have been removed),

Three years ago, Diego Gómez, a conservation biology student at the University of Quindío in Colombia, posted another scientist’s graduate thesis online. “I thought it was something that could be of interested [sic] for other groups, so I shared it on the web,” Gómez wrote on the website of Fundación Karisma, an education advocacy group in Colombia. “I never imagined that this activity could be considered a crime.”

But the author of the thesis disagreed, and last year complained to the Colombian police about the posting. Gómez now faces up to eight years in jail and at least $6,000 in fines for violating copyright. His case highlights the plight of scientists in certain parts of the world who are less able to access and share scientific information.

This wouldn’t have gone far in a US court at all,” said Michael Carroll, the director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University’s Washington School of Law. [emphasis mine] “I’m really upset about this case,” he added. “It bothers me when copyright law gets in the way of scientists doing their science.” [emphasis mine]

While I too am bothered by copyright law being used to subvert science or, in this case, science sharing, Carroll’s comment about US courts (an indirect reference to US law) seems ironic after reading Tim Cushing’s July 28, 2014 Techdirt posting on the case (Note: Links have been removed),

Upload a document to Scribd, go to prison for at least four years. Ridiculous and more than a bit frightening, but in a case that has some obvious parallels with Aaron Swartz’s prosecution, that’s the reality Colombian student Diego Gomez is facing. In the course of his research, he came across a paper integral to his research. In order to ensure others could follow his line of thinking, Gomez uploaded this document for others to view.

According to Gomez, this was a common citation practice among Colombian students …

To be clear, Gomez did not try to profit from the paper. He also wasn’t acting as some sort of indiscriminate distributor of infringing works. But under Colombian law, none of that matters. But to really see who’s to blame here for this ridiculous level of rights enforcement, you have to look past the local laws, past the paper’s author and directly at the US government.

[Gomez] is being sued under a criminal law that was reformed in 2006, following the conclusion of a free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States. The new law was meant to fulfill the trade agreement’s restrictive copyright standards, and it expanded criminal penalties for copyright infringement, increasing possible prison sentences and monetary fines.

More details on the awfulness of Colombia’s law (spurred on by US special interests) are available in the EFF’s [Electronic Frontier Federation] earlier coverage. Colombia gave the US copyright industry everything it wanted in order to secure this free trade agreement… and then it just kept going. …

This bill was hastily passed as a welcoming gift for President Obama, shoved through the legislative process in order to get out ahead of the administration’s appearance at a Colombia-hosted conference. This deference to the US government could cost Gomez at least four years of his life.

While Colombia seemed very eager to take the worst parts of US copyright law (and make them even more terrible), it was less inclined to take any of the good. …

Beneath all of this lies the ugly reality of the academic research market. Just as in the US, plenty of useful information is locked up and inaccessible to anyone unable to afford the frequently exorbitant fees charged by various gatekeepers. Copyright’s original intent — “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts” — isn’t served by this behavior. …

Erik Stokstad’s July 31, 2014 article for ScienceInsider offers more details such as these,

In 2011, Gómez came across a master’s thesis, completed at the National University of Colombia in 2006, that would be useful for identifying amphibians he had seen in protected areas. He posted the thesis on Scribd to allow it to be easily downloaded by other researchers and students. At the time, the downloads were free. When Scribd started charging unregistered users $5 per download, Gómez removed the thesis.

The author of the thesis, a Colombian herpetologist, however, had already notified police that it had been posted without his permission. After being contacted by police, Gómez cooperated with the investigation. In April 2013, a criminal complaint was filed. This past fall, he learned that the office of the attorney general was going to bring the case to trial. Gómez “was in a panic,” says Carolina Botero, an attorney at Fundación Karisma, a digital rights advocacy organization in Bogotá, which is advocating on his behalf.

The Electronic Frontier Federation’s July 23, 2014 posting by Maira Sutton places this incident within an international context and outlines Colombia’s legal framework as it pertains to this case.

Diego Gomez has written about his situation (English language version and Spanish language version) as per some July 2014 postings.

As for Aaron Swartz mentioned in the excerpt from Tim Cushing’s Techdirt post, anyone unfamiliar with the case can find all the information they might want in this Wikipedia entry.