Tag Archives: OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow

Canada’s new copyright bill (C-32) and OECD’s take on intellectual property rights and innovation

Canada’s conservative government introduced a new bill (C-32) on copyright last Wednesday, June 2, 2010. The previous attempt, Bill C-61, died and, as I recall, that death occurred after furious protest largely concerning the ‘digital lock’ provision. This provision was modeled on a similar US provision, which has been highly contested in that country. For a brief description of a digital lock I went to Michael Geist’s blog where I found a posting answering 32 questions about Bill C-32,,

… what are anti-circumvention or digital lock provisions? The short answer is that they are provisions that grant legal protection to technological protection measures (TPMs). In plainer English, traditional copyright law grants creators a basket of exclusive rights in their work. TPMs or digital locks (such as copy-controls on CDs, DVDs, or e-books) effectively provide a second layer of protection by making it difficult for most people to copy or sometimes access works in digital format. Anti-circumvention legislation creates a third layer of protection by making it an infringement to simply pick or break the digital lock (in fact, it even goes further by making it an infringement to make available tools or devices that can be used to pick the digital lock). Under the Bill C-32, it would be an infringement to circumvent a TPM [digital lock] even if the intended use of the underlying work would not constitute traditional copyright infringement. [emphases mine]

I gather that even if I copy something that is now legal in Canada, e. g., make a photocopy of a page from a book for noncommercial purposes, that it will be illegal if I try this with an e-book where I need to break a digital lock. In effect, all copying becomes illegal if there’s a digital lock or other ‘technological protection measure’, which is likely with provisions such as this while we move to using more and more towards using digital media.

Intriguingly, an earlier posting by Michael Geist which focused on the original bill C-61 cited a research paper with a focus on copyright policy in Canada, the US, and Mexico where this was noted,

According to [Michèle] Austin [chief of staff for then Industry Canada Minister, Maxime Bernier], the decision to introduce U.S.-style DMCA [digital lock] rules in Canada in 2007 was strictly a political decision, the result of pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office desire to meet U.S. demands. She states “the Prime Minister’s Office’s position was, move quickly, satisfy the United States.” When Bernier and then-Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda protested, the PMO replied “we don’t care what you do, as long as the U.S. is satisfied.” [emphasis mine]

Thankfully, the new bill according to Geist and other sources he cites (I recommend reading his blog if you’re interested in this issue), is fairly balanced overall except for the digital lock provision.

There are two possibilities that come to mind when I consider how this ‘digital lock provision’ in the new copyright bill could have an impact on science in Canada. First, if publishers put locks on articles in science journals, you’d no longer be able to copy and paste selections (properly cited of course) into your own paper.

Second, copyright is a subclassification, along with patents and trademarks, of intellectual property law. While all three are intended to protect the creators of content, products, etc., they are often used as legal tools to intimidate competitors (large corporations or agencies such as the International Olympics Committee) or extort money (patent trolls), which tends to suppress innovation and competition. Restricting use through a new copyright law may not have a direct effect on patent law but the environment in which business and the legal profession operate will be affected and I strongly suspect adversely so.

I mentioned yesterday, The OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow and its Key Findings report. From p. 18,

An important contributor to building such networks and markets is the ability to own certain kinds of knowledge, as recognised by intellectual property rights [IPR]. IPRs provide an important incentive to invest in innovation by allowing firms to recover their investment costs. Patents are particularly important for small firms, as they can facilitate entry into new markets and enable competition and collaboration with other firms. IPRs should be well protected and appropriately enforced. Weak protection of IPRs undermines incentives to invest in innovation, facilitates counterfeiting and piracy, reduces the potential for technology transfer and limits the formation of markets for knowledge.

However, the protection of knowledge needs to be combined with policies and mechanisms that facilitate access and transfer. Excessively strong IPR may hamper the appropriate use of protected knowledge and discourage follow-on research and research in adjacent areas to the detriment of both competition and innovation.

I certainly consider the ‘digital lock provision’ in the current bill (C-32) as excessively strong and I don’t see how it helps innovation and competition (I think competition arises from innovation which is why I put it second).

US National Science Foundation on science and communicating about its impact on society and OECD report on innovation as a societal effort

On the heels of last week”s posting about the importance of a broad-ranging approach to science and innovation (See: Rob Annan’s [Don’t leave Canada behind blog] latest post, Innovation isn’t just about science funding and Poetry, molecular biophysics and innovation in Canada on this blog), I found these and other related issues being discussed elsewhere. (Side note: I’d love to hear from anyone who might be able to comment on these issues as they arise in other countries. I get most of my information from Canadian, US, and UK sources so it does tend to be limited.)

Dave Bruggeman at Pasco Phronesis highlights an editorial and an article by Corie Lok about the US National Science Foundation and its efforts to have scientists demonstrate or communicate the broader societal impacts of their research work by making it a requirement in their grant application. From Dave’s posting,

Do read the pieces [published in the journal Nature], because I think the point about developing the infrastructure to support research on broader impacts and the implementation of those broader impacts is a necessary step. With a support system in place, researchers may be more inclined to take the criterion seriously. With infrastructure better able to measure impacts, science advocates may have better data from which to advance their causes. …

While there was some mention of efforts in the U.K. and the European Commission to do similar work in making more explicit the connections between scientific research and broader impacts, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a bit more effort to make a stronger connection of lessons learned both for other countries and for the U.S. This is particularly true if new U.K. Science and Universities Minister Willets goes through with a campaign promise to give the Research Excellence Framework a more thorough review.

I encourage you to read Dave’s posting in its entirety as he adds thoughtful commentary and information about the situation in the US while I focus on other aspects of the issue, from the Nature editorial,

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is unique among the world’s science-funding agencies in its insistence that every proposal, large or small, must include an activity to demonstrate the research’s ‘broader impacts’ on science or society. This might involve the researchers giving talks at a local museum, developing new curricula or perhaps forming a start-up company. [emphases mine]

The requirement’s goal is commendable. It aims to enlist the scientific community to help show a return on society’s investment in research and to bolster the public’s trust in science — the latter being particularly important given the well-organized movements currently attacking concepts such as evolution and climate change.

I find the notion that starting up a new company is a way of demonstrating research’s broader societal impact rather unexpected and something I like and dislike in equal measure. I can certainly see where it would encourage the kind of innovation that the Canadian government wishes to foster and I can see the benefits. On the other hand, I think there is a very strong focus on the almighty buck to the exclusion of other social benefits as per “show a return on society’s investment in research,” in the editorial excerpt’s 2nd paragraph. You’ll note that ‘fostering trust’ is second and it’s in the service of ensuring that cherished concepts are not attacked. (Aside: While Nature uses evolution and climate change for its examples here, scientists have fought bitterly over other cherished concepts which have over time proved to be incorrect. For years geneticists dismissed some 98% of the human genome as ‘junk DNA’ . It turns out they were wrong. [see this article in New Scientist for more about the importance of ‘junk DNA’])

As for the focus on ‘society’s return on its research investment’, there’s this from Corie Lok’s Nature article,

Research-funding agencies are forever trying to balance two opposing forces: scientists’ desire to be left alone to do their research, and society’s demand to see a return on its investment. [emphasis mine]

The European Commission, for example, has tried to strike that balance over the past decade by considering social effects when reviewing proposals under its various Framework programmes for research. And the Higher Education Funding Council for England announced last year that, starting in 2013, research will be assessed partly on its demonstrable benefits to the economy, society or culture.

But no agency has gone as far as the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which will not even consider a proposal unless it explicitly includes activities to demonstrate the project’s ‘broader impacts’ on science or society at large. “The criterion was established to get scientists out of their ivory towers and connect them to society,” explains Arden Bement, director of the NSF in Arlington, Virginia.

Here there seems to be a softening of the “return on investment” focus on money and the economy to include “broader impacts” on society and culture. Since the phrase ‘return on investment’ comes from the financial services sector, the meaning will default, unless carefully framed, to financial and economic considerations only.

I guess the question I have is, how do we value broader impacts? I’m a scientist, Get me out of here is a public engagement programme I’ve mentioned before (towards the end of this posting). How do you measure the outcome for a programme where kids stay after school to chat online with scientists about science? Sure you can measure how many kids participate and whether more of them indicate an interest in studying science but these are short-term. There are other possibilities such as increased science literacy over their lifetimes or going on to become a scientist but that will be at least 10 years away. There are also other less directly measurable possibilities (such as using an idea from an online science chat to create a story or an art piece decades after the fact) but these are in the long term and don’t lend themselves easily to measurement.

One other issue, I’d like to touch on is the scientists themselves having difficulty with the concept of ‘broader implications’. I sometimes ask them something along this line, where is your work going to be used or what are the practical applications. The answers can baffle me as I receive a very stripped down response which doesn’t answer the question adequately for someone (me) who isn’t an expert colleague. As I’m usually interviewing by email, I don’t have the option of asking all of the followup questions (often, more than one would be needed) to extract the information.

I’m hopeful that the situation will change with projects such as Terry at the University of British Columbia, from the About page listing a special course,

ASIC 200 – THAT‘S ARTS AND SCIENCE INTEGRATED COURSE – GLOBAL ISSUES.

What is ASIC200? Full course details can be found [here], but here’s a gander at the general course description:

“Human society confronts a range of challenges that are global in scope. These changes threaten planetary and local ecosystems, the stability and sustainability of human societies, and the health and well being of human individuals and communities. The natural and human worlds are now interacting at the global level to an unprecedented degree. Responding to these global issues will be the greatest challenge facing human society in the 21st century. In this course students will explore selected global issues from the perspective of both the physical and life sciences and the social sciences and humanities. The fundamental philosophy of the course is that global issues cannot be fully understood or addressed without a functional literacy in both the Sciences and the Arts. [emphasis mine] In this course, students will develop the knowledge and the practical skills required to become engaged citizens in the local, national, and international civil society dialogue on global issues.”

I like this approach as it requires that arts students also extend their range; it’s not just scientists doing all the work to expand understanding. Even the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) is getting in on the act with recommendations for more innovative societies. From Key Findings (p. 9) in The OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow,

Formal education is the basis for forming human capital, and policy makers should ensure that education systems help learners to adapt to the changing nature of innovation from the start. This requires curricula and pedagogies that equip students with the capacity to learn and apply new skills throughout their lives. Emphasis needs to be placed on skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication, user orientation and teamwork, in addition to domain-specific and linguistic skills. [emphasis mine]

The recommendation is inclusive and not aimed at a specific group such as scientists, although the Key Findings and the Executive Summary (which can be found on this page) seem most heavily invested in developing recommendations for business/market/entrepreneurial innovation rather than the sciences or the humanities.