Thinking about the ethical care of information, knowledge, culture, and what we do for societies over a very long time.

Joshua Chalifour

The hype over the last few months regarding generative AI has been quite interesting. I’ve facilitated a variety of discussions (and presented some) with faculty, staff, and other librarians regarding these tools and I’ve been following the public discourse. The thing that I keep coming back to and which I don’t feel gets the attention that it merits, is the potential to

 consider these newer AI systems, LLMs, etc.

Artificial Intelligence to Examine Us

A common way to model the relationships of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom is the DIKW pyramid. Starting with its base, each concept builds on top of the former. The gist is that we require data to form information † we use information to gain knowledge † and we use knowledge toward developing wisdom. This model is one doorway to understanding the relationship between these concepts.

Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom: Our Pragmatic Ignorance

Open data is a well-defined concept but in the public sector, there is some difficult work ahead for its digital curation. Although the support and production of open data from governments around the world varies (with many not yet supporting it at all) there are clear movements to encourage and grow open government data initiatives.

Digital Curation Issues Involving Open Government Data

This is the third part in a series of three posts.

Part 1 — The TPM Environment and Copyright Change from C-11 Part 2 — Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs

 Part 3 — Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal

Download the whole document (PDF). The Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) identifies five categories of appraisal criteria.

Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal

I’ve been reading the draft consultation version of the Canadian Digital Information Strategy (PDF). The strategy proposes strengthening content, ensuring its preservation, and maximizing its access and use. These are important for many reasons the report addresses regarding culture;

Some Notes on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy Draft

I’ve been thinking about something like an instance

 Community Pledge

becoming commonplace. Mastodon instances tend to post rules, user expectations, a tiny bit of info about administrative practices. This helps cultivate the Mastodon region of the fediverse. But, and I don’t mean the following as criticism, most instances have not communicated what their administrative commitments to their community are.

Could Mastodon Instances Make a Pledge to Their Communities?

As a librarian, I talk with other faculty and students about their academic work and the life-cycle of the research process. I’ve always stressed that open access is important for many reasons, including toward making research outputs available to people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to get them.

Talk about the Broad Value of Open Access

This morning, upon learning of the newly negotiated NAFTA or as it seems to be called now USMCA, I sent the following letter to ministers of the current Canadian government. I appreciate the very difficult and complex work involved in negotiating the new version of NAFTA with the USA and Mexico.

Letter to Ministers Regarding the New NAFTA / USMCA &amp; “Intellectual Property”

This is the second part in a series of three posts.

Part 1 — The TPM Environment and Copyright Change from C-11

 Part 2 — Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs

Part 3 — Copyright Law, TPMs, and Appraisal Download the whole document (PDF). Archives face inexorable problems with the duty to preserve massive quantities of information, stored on frail digital media.

Long Term Digital Preservation and the Role of TDRs

I’d been concerned with what I had once called digital cultural amnesia. Though in reflecting on the word “amnesia” I no longer think it’s the best way to express the problem. Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, writes about the phenomenon in

 The Observer

. She takes the personal analogue and raises it to a national level.

Ephemera and the National Memory

Recent copyright legislation prevents archives from legitimately fulfilling key requirements for the long term preservation and provision of access to digital fonds.

How Recent Copyright Legislation (C-11) and TPMs Prevent Digital Preservation

Communia published its

 Public Domain Manifesto

. The manifesto identifies the public domain concept with respect to historical development and more urgently, its relevance to culture today. I think it makes an important statement, in terms of offering a level, common understanding that could be used widely across society, government, and business.

First Take on the Public Domain Manifesto

Gautama Mehta’s recent article “Proposal to install spyware in university libraries to protect copyrights shocks academics” is an important read.

Publishers Proposing Surveillance Tech on Libraries

Sometimes we see headlines in the news about a book being challenged at a library. People from different perspectives might see the content of the book or other aspects of it as threatening or inappropriate. Understanding these challenges and forming responses is essential to our work as librarians in advocating and supporting intellectual freedom. Now, the work to track this information will receive more coordinated support.

Tracking the Challenges Made to Canadian Library Books

The processes and supports within an institution can, I’ve noticed, demand a bit of effort to change. When we speak of

 open scholarship

or

 open science

, many aspects tie-in or lead out from those concepts, which makes the whole prospect of institutional change quite complex.

Institutional Change toward Open Scholarship and Open Science

I first read an e-book a few years ago when I decided to see how War and Peace felt on my phone. Engrossing. And probably no less so than it is on paper. Now I like both paper books and e-books but the spread of e-books is about more than just enjoying them or not.

E-books: New Experiences and Problems with Access

Chroknowlogy

This morning, upon learning of the newly negotiated NAFTA or as it seems
to be called now USMCA, I sent the following letter to ministers of the
current Canadian government.

I appreciate the very difficult and complex work involved in negotiating
the new version of NAFTA with the USA and Mexico. I'm writing to you
(from the perspective of a Canadian citizen and as a librarian at a
Quebec university) for your respective roles in negotiating NAFTA/USMCA
and as my local riding MP.

After reading the news about the agreement and briefly examining the
portions on "intellectual property" this morning, it's disturbing what
Canada appears to be agreeing to.

Over the last several years, we've had multiple copyright consultations
across Canada. "Intellectual property" issues from other trade
agreements have been publicly discussed. Time-after-time, Canadians have
rejected the regressive, restrictive, longer, and generally wrong-headed
policies that both the American government and private industry have
tried to push with respect to copyright/"intellectual property."

These policies are detrimental to our culture, they're anti-innovation,
anti-knowledge, and aggressive toward the public well-being. I find it
alarming and disrespectful that in one fell swoop this morning we see so
many things that ***we've repeatedly rejected*** and spoken out against,
suddenly included in the new agreement.

As a professional librarian, working in favour of ethical and open
access to knowledge, working in favour of leading-edge research, I
strongly oppose the restrictions in the new agreement. I say that
knowing that there are exemptions for memory institutions such as my
own. Those are hardly enough. My concern here is for a much broader
good, for our society, which will suffer from these regressive and
ill-considered "intellectual property" policies. I hope that these are
removed from the agreement.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

### You can write to them too!

::: {.status__content__text .status__content__text--visible tabindex="0"}
Canadian MPs to contact in protest of the new NAFTA / USMCA
"intellectual property" restrictions. Look them all up here:
[[http://www.]{.invisible}[ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians]{.ellipsis}[/en/members]{.invisible}](http://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members "http://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members"){.status-link
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"}

### Ministers

- **Chrystia Freeland -- Chrystia.Freeland@parl.gc.ca (Foreign
  Affairs)**
- Pablo Rodriguez -- Pablo.Rodriguez@parl.gc.ca (Heritage &
  Multiculturalism)
- Kirsty Duncan -- kirsty.duncan@parl.gc.ca (Science & Sport)
- Navdeep Bains -- Navdeep.Bains@parl.gc.ca (Innovation, Science &
  Economic Development)
:::


[Communia](http://communia-project.eu/ "European thematic network on digital public domain")
published its **[Public Domain
Manifesto](http://www.publicdomainmanifesto.org/manifesto "The Public Domain Manifesto")**.
The manifesto identifies the public domain concept with respect to
historical development and more urgently, its relevance to culture
today.

I think it makes an important statement, in terms of offering a level,
common understanding that could be used widely across society,
government, and business. Early in the manifesto, it says the public
domain

> ". . . is the basis of our self-understanding as expressed by our
> shared knowledge and culture. It is the raw material from which new
> knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created. The Public
> Domain acts as a protective mechanism that ensures that this raw
> material is available at its cost of reproduction -- close to zero --
> and that all members of society can build upon it. Having a healthy
> and thriving Public Domain is essential to the social and economic
> well-being of our societies."

I think this is a particularly well-put point. I'd hoped to express a
similar idea in my
[response](http://www.pundit.phydeau.org/analysis/response-to-canadian-copyright-consultation/ "Response to Canadian Copyright Consultation")
to the recent Canadian copyright consultation (and other writings). The
manifesto proposes principles and guidelines to foster the well-being of
our public domain for the 21st century.

Many of its recommendations make sense to establish as a common global
basis. Having such a basis would foster an understandable and common
societal/cultural norm in the face of special interests that don't
always operate from a larger, more long-term perspective.

It recommends (I'll paraphrase, but these are spelled out with more
precision and detail in the manifesto itself)

- Reducing the term of copyright protection
- Changes to the scope of copyright protection take into account the
  effects on the Public Domain
- Material in the Public Domain in its country of origin, is in the
  Public Domain in all other countries
- Punishing false or misleading attempts to misappropriate Public Domain
  material
- Prohibiting other rights from reconstituting exclusivity over Public
  Domain material. Ensure a practical and effective path to make orphan
  and non-comercially available works available for re-use by society
- Make it the role of cultural heritage institutions to label and
  preserve Public Domain works
- Get rid of legal obstacles preventing the voluntary sharing of works
- Enabling personal non-commercial uses of protected works and looking
  into alternate forms of remuneration for authors/artists.

I see these as a welcome prescription for the cancers spreading through
various governments' approaches to copyright, particularly in the age of
digital reproduceability,  Internet distribution, and an imbalance of
corporate influence.

Setting these recommendations as a baseline would provide a common
understanding from which to open up new, modern business models. We
desperately need to affirm something like this manifesto to keep our
culture vibrant, and our creative arts and sciences bubbling with
inspiration and discovery.
