Wired News nous propose un survol d’un nouveau module d’extension pour Firefox qui vise à transformer la diffusion de l’information juridique aux États-Unis:

Access to the nation’s federal law proceedings just got a public interest hack, thanks to programmers from Princeton, Harvard and the Internet Archive, who released a Firefox plug-in designed to make millions of pages of legal documents free.

Il s’agit du module RECAP, qui archive des documents juridiques et vérifie s’ils sont disponibles gratuitement en-ligne au lieu de les commander par le système archaique du gouvernement américain.

Au Canada, nous pouvons compter sur l’Institut canadien d’information juridique qui diffuse gratuitement dans Internet les lois et jugements du fédéral et de toutes les provinces depuis près d’une décénie.

Deux sites à visiter: European Public Sector Information (PSI) Platform ainsi que PSI Alliance. Le débat consiste à savoir comment les données et les documents des gouvernements devraient êtres diffusées en-ligne.

Il ne s’agit pas uniquement d’une question technologique, mais également juridique. En effet, les données et documents gouvernementaux sont souvent protégés par un droit d’auteur conféré aux gouvernements, comme le droit d’auteur de la couronne au Canada, ainsi que d’autres dispositions comme des contrats de licence. Aux États-Unis, toute production du gouvernement fédéral est versé directement dans le domaine public, ce qui fait bien des jaloux à travers le monde.

Le New York Times publie un texte très intéressant de Temar Lewin le 9 août concernant quelques initiatives aux États-Unis de créer des manuels scolaires en mode collaboratif par les états et autres intervenants du secteur public:

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

“Kids are wired differently these days,” said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles, La. “They’re digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.

“They don’t engage with textbooks that are finite, linear and rote,” Dr. Abshire continued. “Teachers need digital resources to find those documents, those blogs, those wikis that get them beyond the plain vanilla curriculum in the textbooks.”

À ne pas manquer également, le débat en-ligne sur le site EduTechDebate.org, qui se base sur une initiative qui traite de l’accès libre à l’information en Afrique.

Le Conseil de presse du Québec recrute un membre du public pour siéger au sein de son conseil d’administration. Ce tribunal d’honneur à adhésion volontaire vise à promouvoir le respect des plus hautes normes éthiques en matière de droits et responsabilités de la presse.

Les personnes intéressées ont jusqu’au vendredi 14 août pour présenter leur candidature.

Le bureau de la recherche de l’Université Concordia annonce la publication d’un rapport sur l’accès libre à la documentation produite dans le cadre des recherches des professeurs intitulé Open Access at Concordia: A Report for the Office of Research.

Le Sismographe, le carnet culturel des journalistes du quotidien montréalais Le Devoir, rapporte le cas d’un internaute des USA qui a téléchargé près de 3000 photos du Musée national du portrait (MNP) au Royaume-Uni. Selon Wiki News,

he complaint by the NPG is that under UK law, its copyright in the photographs of its portraits is being violated. While the gallery has complained to the Wikimedia Foundation for a number of years, this is the first direct threat of legal action made against an actual uploader of images. In addition to the allegation that Coetzee had violated the NPG’s copyright, they also allege that Coetzee had, by uploading thousands of images in bulk, infringed the NPG’s database right, breached a contract with the NPG; and circumvented a copyright protection mechanism on the NPG’s web site.

The copyright protection mechanism referred to is Zoomify, a product of Zoomify, Inc. of Santa Cruz, California. NPG’s solicitors stated in their letter that « Our client used the Zoomify technology to protect our client’s copyright in the high resolution images. ». Zoomify Inc. states in the Zoomify support documentation that its product is intended to make copying of images « more difficult » by breaking the image into smaller pieces and disabling the option within many web browsers to click and save images, but that they « provide Zoomify as a viewing solution and not an image security system ».

In particular, Zoomify’s website comments that while « many customers — famous museums for example » use Zoomify, in their experience a « general consensus » seems to exist that most museums are concerned to make the images in their galleries accessible to the public, rather than prevent the public from accessing them or making copies; they observe that a desire to prevent high resolution images being distributed would also imply prohibiting the sale of any posters or production of high quality printed material that could be scanned and placed online.

Appropriation du domaine public par un musée et libération par un robin des bois numérique? Cas de violation de contrat d’utilisation d’un site par un individu obtus? Le débat est lancé…

À l’occasion de la 10e conférence internationale « Law via the Internet » (Le droit par Internet), qui se aura lieu à Durban en Afrique du Sud les 26 et 27 novembre 2009, le rédacteur en chef de CultureLibre.ca, Olivier Charbonneau, a proposé la communication suivante:

Title: How can Web 2.0 technologies help us understand the law?
Author:
Olivier Charbonneau, BCom, MSI, LLM
Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Abstract :
In 2008, the first volume of a report by the United-Nation’s Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (http://www.undp.org/legalempowerment/) found that at least four billion people are excluded from the rule of law. Of the many strategies it explores, the Commission states that “[e]mpowering the poor through improved dissemination of legal information and formation of peer groups (self-help) are first-step strategies towards justice” (p. 64). It seems that the Legal Information Institute movement is uniquely situated and could position itself to act as an enabling force to make this vision a reality.
The growing popularity of user generated content technologies, also called the collaborative web or simply Web 2.0, opens the door to many possibilities to support peer groups in the context of self-help. Examples abound from different areas, such as social networking, blogging or collaborative authorship (Wikis). Careful analysis is required in order to identify adequate technologies or processes that would enable access to justice and the Rule of Law, within the context of the above report and the open access to primary legal materials via the Internet.
We propose to succinctly present current user generated content technologies in order to establish a conceptual framework. This conceptual framework allows us to explore, in a structured way, how user generated content technologies can be applied to the specific case of court rulings openly available in a Legal Information Institute’s websites. A parallel will be drawn with other technological tool traditionally applied to legal documentation. This analysis aims to guide and prioritize future developments of technologies for the benefit all.
This study was conducted as a master’s thesis (LLM) under the supervision of Daniel Poulin, director of the LexUM research center, which produces www.canlii.org, at the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Law. The author, Olivier Charbonneau, is an Associate Librarian at Concordia University, a member of the Scientific Committee of the LexUM Research Chair and keeps a blog in French at www.culturelibre.ca.

Par exemple, au Canada, le site internet www.canlii.org propose, en accès libre et gratuit, une base de donnée de toutes les lois et jugements du fédéral ainsi que de toutes les province du Canada.

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., rédacteur en chef de Digital Scholarship, annonce la publication de la version 4 de sa bibliographie sur les thèses et dissertations électroniques : The Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 4.

Selon notre collègue des USA,

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles, conference papers, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.

Ithaka, un groupe voué à l’étude et le support de l’édition académique libre, annonce le lancement d’un rapport d’étude sur 12 modèles exploités par des groupes de chercheurs pour assurer la pérennité financière de leurs projets d’édition libre. Intitulé Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today, offre une perspective intéressante pour les administrateurs de tels projets :

Dr Malcolm Read, JISC’s [groupe d’académiques en Grande-Bretagne] Executive Secretary said, « These case studies demonstrate the innovative and dynamic approaches for universities and others to sustain digital resources online in the most cost effective way. »

The final report serves as a guide to the cases, and argues that sustainability entails much more than simply covering the costs of putting a resource online. Equally important is ensuring the ongoing development of
the resource to suit the continually evolving needs of its users. The paper presents a framework for thinking about sustainability, outlining the five stages that successful projects must undertake in developing sustainability models: from acquiring a deep understanding of users and their needs, to thinking broadly about the range of revenue models that might be possible.

The studies also demonstrate that, while many projects are attempting to generate some revenue through subscription, pay-per-view, and a range of licensing arrangements, their overall financial picture still depends
heavily on receiving direct as well as in-kind support from the institutions that host them.

Le conseil d’administration de l’Association of Research Libraries a voté une résolution incitant ses membres à ne pas signer des entented ou des licences d’accès à de la documentation qui contiennent des clauses de confidentialité des termes dudit contrat. Selon le site de ce groupe de bibliothèques universitaires,

The Board adopted this position at the ARL Membership Meeting in Houston, Texas, on May 22. The resolution was prepared in response to the concerns of membership that, as the amount of licensed content has increased, especially through packages of publications, nondisclosure or confidentiality clauses have had a negative impact on effective negotiations. The Scholarly Communication Steering Committee took the position that an open market will result in better licensing terms. In their discussions, the committee also noted the value of encouraging research projects and other efforts to gather information about the current market and licensing terms, such as an initiative being undertaken by Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara, Paul Courant, University of Michigan, and Preston McAfee, Cal Tech, to acquire information on bundled site-license contracts. A panel session on collaboration held later in the Membership Meeting included informal polls of members and the results indicated high levels of agreement and a positive commitment for making this information public when possible.