My Letter to Congress: H.R.3699 Research Works Act

I oppose H.R.3699 - Research Works Act, and am tracking it using OpenCongress.org, the free public resource website for government transparency and accountability.

17 U.S.C. §105 says "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government". That wording is crystal-clear: documentation and research funded by taxpayers is not copyrightable, and is 100% open and available to the public that funded it. It should not be locked-up behind a pay-wall for any reason, but that is already happening illegally and this Bill seeks to legalize it under false pretenses.

I became aware of this as a problem when I was diagnosed with cancer and tried to find treatment information on the Internet. Almost every single research paper was unavailable unless I paid a fee to access it. The vast majority of these papers were the product of taxpayer funded research and as such, should be available without fee. But using the exact excuses that appear in H.R. 3699 (value-add, peer-revue, editing), self-appointed "gatekeepers" have misappropriated the fruits of "we the people".

It's pretty clear to me that 99.99% of the value of these papers is in the results that are reported in them. Anyone purporting to "add value" by editing them or arranging for peer review should be laughed at.

Looking back at 17 U.S.C., it's very clearly stated in §103 (b) "The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work", so if a publisher wishes to "add value", they are already free to do so and can charge a fee for viewing those modifications, but they are not allowed to claim copyright on the original work or to remove it from free circulation.

Therefore, the sole purpose of H.R. 3699 is to give away the rights of taxpayers to the results of research that they paid for ("prohibits ... network dissemination"), forcing us to pay an additional fee to a freeloader who essentially did nothing to enhance that research.

Congress has no business shoring-up yet another failing business model that has been obsoleted by the Internet. Let the publishing industry adapt to the technology or become fodder for those who will.

Companies like Elsevier, Springer and Wiley have been stealing from the public domain and from academic researchers for long enough. It's time to stop them.

I urge you to vote NO on this Bill.

For more information, please see www.taxpayeraccess.org and www.plos.org.

Sincerely,
Richard Gingras