A footnote in Pamela Samuelson’s objection tipped me off:

Most other signatories [to the brief] … are members of the Author Subclass by virtue of the book-bound copies of their Ph.D. dissertations filed in research libraries of the universities from which they received their degrees.

I hadn’t realized that dissertations were eligible “works” under the terms of the settlement. That means my late mother’s dissertation, for which I now exercise copyright, would be subject to the settlement terms. An email to the class counsel confirmed it.

I’ve claimed the work on the settlement site. It’s not listed as having been digitized. I’ve set the options as permissive as possible, including a zero price for consumer purchase. (The promised option to apply a Creative Commons license isn’t yet offered.)

I don’t intend to opt out of the settlement: I support the further availability of the work (which, on balance, I think the settlement would increase). If participation brings any financial benefits, well, I’ll take them.

However, I’m entertaining the thought of joining an objection to some terms of the settlement. Since I missed the deadline to object to the original proposed settlement, I’ll only be able to object to terms revised in the amended settlement, but there’s still plenty to be wary of. My concerns are primarily competition, users’ rights (open formats, DRM, privacy), and facilitating rightsholder choices more permissive than the settlement defaults (including open access). If you know of an objection which addresses these points and is accepting additional signatories, please let me know, in the comments or by email.

In late 2006 or early 2007, I was looking for ways to get students interested in open access. I had started to become versed in the topic myself a few months earlier, after my library announced it planned to cut subscriptions around the same time the Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced for the first time. At the time, there were no resources for students and no student organizations meaningfully engaged with the issue. I helped the Alliance for Taxpayer Access scrape together some basic information for and about students, but no one paid much attention.

At some point, I had the idea of picking a day to try to focus student attention on open access. We’d choose a date and ask our few student allies to organize some activities to speak out on the issue. This became the National Day of Action for Open Access.

We didn’t have much lead time to plan, and few resources. Not a lot of people participated — but a few did. There wasn’t much attention, but we did get an article in the Washington Post, where I went completely off-message. (Coincidentally, the reporter was Rick Weiss, who later edited Science Next, which included an essay by me about open access.) It was a start.

By the next year, I was consulting for SPARC. We decided to revive the concept, but shifted the schedule and the focus: not just students, we wanted everybody to make noise about open access. For Open Access Day 2008, we had more time and more resources. In organizing it, I dropped the ball too many times, but thankfully someone was always there to pick it up. The response was much bigger; we made a splash.

After 2008, the organizers made two strategic decisions which I disagreed with at the time but were absolutely right. One was to expand the day to a week to make scheduling easier. The other was not to organize a central event, but instead to rely more on the partners and hosts to take more initiative. I was afraid we’d have insufficient focus and momentum. Instead, we let a hundred flowers blossom. The more flexible schedule, along with an increased role for partnerships — and our experience and increased visibility from the first time around — combined to make Open Access Week the most vibrant outing yet. The breath and depth of activities worldwide, along with a number of high-profile announcements timed for the week, are truly remarkable. I haven’t been very involved since the early strategic planning, so I can’t claim much credit. But I am thrilled and impressed with the outcome.

Most personally touching for me are the events in Cuba. Growing up in Florida, Cuba was only 90 miles across the strait but impossibly far culturally. There is no direct fiber optic link, nor even direct postal service, between Cuba and the U.S.; as an American, I need special permission from my government to travel there. Reportedly, only 2% of Cubans have Internet access. So it was a revelation to realize that our message of open access to scholarship had resonated in Cuba. For me, it’s a symbol of what open access is all about: the free exchange of knowledge and ideas worldwide.

Happy Open Access Week. May it be the first of many.

So I’ll try with a public commitment — and encourage readers to hold me to this — to post at least once a week.

I append a ? to “more” in the title because, browsing over the archives for 2009 so far, it appears I’m averaging about a post per week already, excluding liveblogs and brief announcements. So I suppose I’m really just committing to maintain at least the volume and frequency so far.

I’ve got some pretty interesting stuff churning in the draft queue, so be on the lookout. At least, I think it’s interesting — hopefully you will too!

1. Be more organized.
2. Be more productive.
3. Have more fun.

As a sub-point of (2), I aim to blog more often (and have tried to start doing so already). So expect to see more here.

I’ll also be improving the site in various ways: upgrading WordPress and the plugins, maybe installing new plugins or changing the theme, adding more content, etc.

I’ll be syndicating my Connotea and Identi.ca feeds here, too, though you can grab them directly if you’re interested. My Connotea bookmarks are mostly professional; my dents are more personal, though I’m not sure if that trend will continue.

There’s not much at Free Culture DC yet. I’ve been adding links and calendar entries for a while; that’s about all. There’s a lot of links and events (mostly past, now), but it’s a bit haphazard and not very well-organized. The calendar is using the Event Calendar plugin for WordPress, which is basic but functional.

Here’s my vision for Free Culture DC. I want it to be an essential resource for people in the DC area who are interested in free culture. I want to collect relevant local news and commentary, along with lectures, conferences, screenings, performances, parties, protests, etc. in the calendar. As to what “relevant” means, topics could include (but are not necessarily limited to):

• free and open source software
• open access to research / open science
• open educational resources
• Creative Commons
• copyright, patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property rights
• telecom, the digital divide, Net neutrality, spectrum policy, broadband access, etc.
• open access to public sector information (government data, government publications, etc.)
• open government (online transparency applications, etc.)
• human rights and civil liberties in digital environments (free speech online, etc.)

I hope it’ll contribute to building a flourishing free culture scene in the DC area.

So head over to Free Culture DC and check it out. Grab the RSS feed for the blog, or the RSS or iCal for the calendar. If you’d like to get involved, drop me an email. And spread the word!

I wasn’t able to be as involved with OA Day as I would have liked, due to a variety of personal matters, but I still think of it as (in some part) my baby. I was one of the leaders of 2007′s National Day of Action for Open Access and one of the leaders in refining that event into OA Day. We’ve come a long way in the year and a half separating those milestones, and the remarkable growth of OA Day reflects that progress.

The Day of Action was conceived as being student-led and student-oriented; by contrast, OA Day was by all, for all. OA Day was also international, rather than solely U.S.-focused, in scope. OA Day had more support from SPARC and PLoS, whose great efforts and prestige in the community vastly raised the profile of the event and contributed significantly to its growth. Notably, libraries were much more active in organizing activities to promote OA, which I see in part as a reflection of the increased resources available for (and acceptance of) library outreach, especially to students.

I’ve spent much of yesterday and today poring through the many blog posts marking OA Day. They were written by researchers, students, librarians, publishers, technologists, and advocates. They range from cursory to extensive; from scientific in tone to personal and emotionally moving; and they espouse the broad litany of arguments in favor of OA. In a word, the response has been simply inspirational. Thank you. To everyone who hosted an event for OA Day, or attended one, or wrote a blog post about it, or shared the word with a colleague or friend, and to the institutions that timed the announcement of a new initiative or product to coincide with OA Day: thank you.

A hearty kudos go to my colleagues at SPARC and PLoS whose sweat equity and financial commitment made this possible. (Thanks, then, also go to their funders and supporters. For the many blog posts which have remarked on the need for greater advocacy, few have discussed how to make this possible; as with all things, it takes resources. Considering the mighty juggernaut that is the OA movement, if people saw the shoestrings earmarked for advocacy, it’d make heads spin.) Special recognition also goes to the speakers and moderators on the Webcasts, as well as the filmmakers and interviewees of the Voices of Open Access series.

I offer this personal pledge: as long as I’m able to continue working within the OA movement, I promise to rededicate myself to leveraging and building upon the momentum of OA Day — to spread the word wider; to deepen commitments; to motivate us anew to speak up, to act up, and to live out our principles; to ensure the urgent message of OA echoes in the halls of power and in the hearts of scholars, today’s and tomorrow’s — and, if we are very lucky, to make Open Access Day 2009 even bigger and better than the first one.

I forget who took the photo, either Karen or Fred. Either way, it was CC-licensed. I don’t know whether they attributed; anyway, it’s fair use. (Thanks to Hendrik for the tip.)