Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics, Cambridge - #rds2013: #okfn Content-mining: Europe MUST legitimize it. « petermr's blog

"I’m on an EC committee looking at how to make content available for mining. (At least I thought that was the point – it seems it isn’t). 'Licences for Europe –A Stakeholder Dialogue' Working Group 4: Text and Data Mining ...  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to attend the first meeting as I have been in Australia, but @rmounce has stood in and done a truly exceptional job. The WG is looking at licences and WG4 is on content mining. Ross reported back on Saturday and was disappointed. It seems that the WG4 has been told it has no course of action other than to accept that licences are the way forward. This is unacceptable in a democratic system. It is difficult enough for us volunteers to compete against the rich media and publisher community. If I go to Brussels I have to find the money. These WGs are monthly. That’s a huge personal cost in time and money. The asymmetry of fighting for digital rights is a huge burden. Note also that it’s a huge drain of opportunity costs. Rather than writing innovative code we have to write letters to Brussels. And that’s what we have done (I’m not on, but I would have been). Here’s our letter ..."