Archive for February 26th, 2007

Privacy Commissioner on Domain Name Registrant ID Requirements

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has just released a finding that considers domain name registrar requirements of personal identification, such as a driver's license, in order to change the administrative email address for a domain name registration.  The Commissioner found that the requirement was reasonable, noting that ID requirements are […]

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February 26, 2007 4 comments News

Open Access Reshaping Rules of Research

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) focuses on the growing global demand for open access, a trend that is forcing researchers, publishers, universities, and funding agencies to reconsider their role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

For years, the research model remained relatively static.  In Canada, federal funding agencies in the sciences, social sciences, and health sciences doled out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support research at Canadian universities.  University researchers typically published their findings in expensive, peer-reviewed publications, which were purchased by those same publicly-funded universities.  
The model certainly proved lucrative for large publishers, yet resulted in the public paying twice for research that it was frequently unable to access.  Cancer patients seeking information on new treatments or parents searching for the latest on childhood development issues were often denied access to the research they indirectly fund through their tax dollars.

The emergence of the Internet dramatically changes the equation.  

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February 26, 2007 Comments are Disabled Columns

Open Access Reshaping Rules of Research

Appeared in the Toronto Star on February 26, 2007 as Open Access: Reshaping Rules of Research Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy to require that all government-funded research be made available to the public shortly […]

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February 26, 2007 1 comment Columns Archive