Supporting Alternative Incentive Mechanisms for Digital Content: A Comparison of Canadian and US Policy

This paper compares the Government of Canada’s copyright focused approach for encouraging the production of digital content with the U.S. Government’s adoption of a range of incentive systems for the production of content through a content analysis of government policy papers. The first part of the paper examines Canadian policy outlined in the Improving Canada’s Digital Advantage consultation paper and the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (Bill C-32). The paper argues the government is overly reliant on copyright to encourage the production of creative digital content. Though Bill C-32 would expand the definition of fair dealing and create a user generated content exception, the effectiveness of these measures is severely limited by through the proposed protections for technological protection measures. The second part of the paper examines innovative alternatives to copyright that are being promoted by the U.S. government. The Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive not only provides citizens with access to government data, but also calls on federal departments to use prizes to encourage innovative uses of the data. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has taken a leading role in promoting open access publication of research funded with federal monies by requiring deposit of publications resulting from research in the open access repository PubMed Central. The paper concludes by positing that Canada’s digital economy strategy would be strengthened by providing greater federal support for alternatives to intellectual property such as open data and open access and lessening the focus on copyright as an incentive digital content production

Intellectual Property and Its Alternatives: Incentives, Innovation and Ideology

This dissertation examines the ability of intellectual property (IP) and its alternatives to both facilitate and impede innovation. Over the past 30 years there has been both an expansionary IP policy regime marked by significant increases in IP protection and a flourishing of alternatives to IP as digital technologies empower end users to create and disseminate intellectual works. However, it remains unclear as to whether alternatives to IP can mitigate the problems of exclusionary IP rights while also encouraging innovation. This dissertation provides a theoretical framework for analyzing alternatives to IP focusing on the incentives structures utilized, ability to produce innovative outcomes, and the kind of innovation engendered with the aim of identifying which alternatives are substantive alternatives to IP

Toward a Critical Approach for OER: A Case Study in Removing the ‘Big Five’ from OER Creation

This paper examines the role of proprietary software in the production of open educational resources (OER). Using a single case study, the paper explores the implications of removing proprietary software from an OER project, with the aim of examining how complicated such a process is and whether removing such software meaningfully advances a critical approach to OER. The analysis reveals that software from the Big Five technology companies (Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft) are deeply embedded in OER production and distribution, and that complete elimination of software or services from these companies is not feasible. The paper concludes by positing that simply rejecting Big Five technology introduces too many challenges to be justified on a pragmatic basis; however, it encourages OER creators to remain critical in their use of technology and continue to try to advance a critical approach to OER

Democratizing Access to Knowledge: Find Out What Open Educational Resources (OER) Have to Offer

This presentation provides an overview of Open Educational Resources (OER). It begins by describing what OER are and why they are important. It then examines where OER can be found and provides some screenshots of the OER Commons, MIT`s Open Courseware Initiative and Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT). The presentation also covers copyright and licensing issues, including a description of the Creative Commons licensing system. It concludes with a brief discussion of how to create OER and provides additional references and resources

Technology Transfer and Innovation Policy at Canadian Universities: Opportunities and Social Costs

This project examines the role of universities in transmitting knowledge in the forms of technology transfer mechanisms, intellectual property (IP) agreements and other knowledge diffusion policies

Mobilizing User-Generated Content For Canada’s Digital Advantage

Executive Summary: The goal of the Mobilizing User-Generated Content for Canada’s Digital Content Advantage project is to define User-Generated Content (UGC) in its current state, identify successful models built for UGC, and anticipate barriers and policy infrastructure needed to sustain a model to leverage the further development of UGC to Canada\u27s advantage. At the outset, we divided our research into three domains: creative content, small scale tools and collaborative user-generated content. User-generated creative content is becoming increasingly evident throughout the technological ecology through online platforms and online social networks where individuals develop, create and capture information and choose to distribute content through an online platform in a transformative manner. The Internet offers many tools and resources that simplify the various UGC processes and models. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and others provide functionality to upload content directly into the site itself, eliminating the need for formatting and conversion, and allowing almost instantaneous access to the content by the user’s social network. The successful sites have been able to integrate content creation, aggregation, distribution, and consumption into a single tool, further eroding some of the traditional dichotomies between content creators and end-users. Along with these larger scale resources, this study also treats small scale tools, which are tools, modifications, and applications that have been created by a user or group of users. There are three main categories of small scale tools. The first is game modifications, or add-ons, which are created by users/players in order to modify the game or assist in its play. The second is modifications, objects, or tools created for virtual worlds such as Second Life. Third, users create applications and tools for mobile devices, such as the iPhone or the Android system. The third domain considers UGC which is generated collaboratively. This category is comprised of wikis, open source software and creative content authored by a group rather than a sole individual. Several highly successful examples of collaborative UGC include Wikipedia, and open source projects such as the Linux operating system, Mozilla Firefox and the Apache platform. Major barriers to the production, distribution and aggregation of collaborative UGC are unduly restrictive intellectual property rights (including copyrights, licensing requirements and technological protection mechanisms). There are several crucial infrastructure and policies required to facilitate collaborative UGC. For example, in the area of copyright policy, a careful balance is needed to provide appropriate protection while still allowing downstream UGC creation. Other policy considerations include issues pertaining to technological protection mechanisms, privacy rights, consumer protection and competition. In terms of infrastructure, broadband internet access is the primary technological infrastructure required to promote collaborative UGC creation. There has recently been a proliferation of literature pertaining to all three of these domains, which are reviewed. Assessments are made about the most effective models and practices for each domain, as well as the barriers which impede further developments. This initial research is used as a basis for generating some tentative conclusions and recommendations for further research about the policy and technological infrastructures required to best mobilize and leverage user-generated content to create additional value in the digital economy internal and external to Canada. Policy recommendations based on this research focus on two principles: balancing the interest of both content owners and users, and creating an enabling environment in which UGC production, distribution, aggregation, and re-use can flourish

Technology Transfer and Innovation Policy at Canadian Universities: Opportunities and Social Costs

This report, supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Knowledge Synthesis Grant, critically examines the role of universities in transmitting knowledge in the forms of technology transfer mechanisms, intellectual property agreements and other knowledge diffusion policies. In reviewing and synthesizing the recent literature on the topic, we seek to provide some initial evidence-based policy recommendations in order to generally strengthen Canada‘s innovation ecosystem and more specifically to maximize the return on the nation‘s investment in higher education research and development

Mobilizing User-Generated Content for Canada’s Digital Content Advantage

The goal of the Mobilizing User-Generated Content for Canada’s Digital Content Advantage project is to define User-Generated Content (UGC) in its current state, identify successful models built for UGC, and anticipate barriers and policy infrastructure needed to sustain a model to leverage the further development of UGC to Canada\u27s advantage.This poster session is based on the report, Mobilizing User-Generated Content For Canada’s Digital Advantage (http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/fimspub/21/) and is related to the Brown Bag presentation also presented on March 23, 2011 (http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/fimspres/11/)

Structure of a pseudokinase domain switch that controls oncogenic activation of Jak kinases

The V617F mutation in the Jak2 pseudokinase domain causes myeloproliferative neoplasms, and the equivalent mutation in Jak1 (V658F) is found in T-cell leukemias. Crystal structures of wild type and V658F mutant human Jak1 pseudokinase reveal a conformational switch that remodels a linker segment encoded by exon 12, which is also a site of mutations in Jak2. This switch is required for V617F-mediated Jak2 activation, and possibly for physiologic Jak activation