{"id":1736,"date":"2009-11-08T19:03:42","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T23:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=1736"},"modified":"2015-03-17T21:46:22","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T01:46:22","slug":"jeff-ward-wants-my-writing-free-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2009\/11\/08\/jeff-ward-wants-my-writing-free-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Ward Wants My Writing \u2014 Free (3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spelogo_new\"… I met Coleman at an SPE conference a few years ago … and I wondered how he could be so consistently luddite and backward about the future of photographic education. Mainly, judging from his web presence, I really don’t feel like he “gets” the internets.<\/em><\/p>\n

Coleman was hawking a subscription-based service for scholars that sought to profit from the formative documents\/writings of photography rather than making them open access. I find locking up the past behind a firewall is abhorrent, and I just couldn\u2019t convince him (in a brief conversation at least) that the future should be <\/em>open and <\/em>accessible repositories. The problem, of course, is what sort of funding model you use. I\u2019ve never been able to get interested in the subscription model and I sincerely believe that it is the responsibility of institutions (government, museums, schools, even corporations) to feed into a public commons to further the public good. Monetized knowledge is suspect, for me at least\u2014I don\u2019t buy it.<\/em><\/p>\n

… While someone needs to pay for these pursuits, … insistence on strict adherence to a business model erodes the public good. …<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Jeff Ward, “Pumping and Dumping (the Art Marketplace)”<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, there I was at that Society for Photographic Education National Conference a few years back, standing behind the table I’d rented in the conference Exhibits Fair, unabashedly “hawking” my wares \u2014 including the project I subsidize, organize, edit, and publish online, the Photography Criticism CyberArchive<\/a>, a deep repository of historical and contemporary texts on photography and related matters by a wide range of authors. Jeff Ward stepped up to my table during store hours to tell me that I was doing it all wrong<\/a>, and here we are.<\/p>\n

\"PCCA<\/a><\/p>\n

Let me spell out the origin of the project in question. The idea for the PCCA came out of a decade’s observation of and engagement with content aggregation and delivery via the web. (PC Magazine<\/a><\/em> defines a\u00a0content aggregator<\/em> as “An organization that combines information such as news, sports scores, weather forecasts and reference materials from various sources and makes it available to its customers.”)\u00a0Many of the instances and examples had proved negative, primary among them the massive Lexis-Nexis infringement (including work of mine) that led to the landmark Tasini vs. Times<\/a> Supreme Court decision and the much smaller-scale looting of dozens of essays from dozens of writers by the Paul Kopeikin Gallery<\/a> (also including work of mine).<\/p>\n

\"LexisNexis\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Many content aggregators did it wrong, from my standpoint, starting with their basic assumption that they could and should get their content free of charge. How, then, could one do it right? That would involve serving the needs of all concerned:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Content providers should have their copyright and subsidiary rights respected and protected; they should have the option of agreeing to participation or refusing it; and they should get paid for their content.<\/li>\n
  2. Content users should receive access to substantial material otherwise unavailable online; they should get it in an easy-to-use format; as students, teachers, scholars, or simply readers, they should have it accompanied by the permissions necessary for appropriate personal and professional use \u2014 bibliographic annotation, permission for “fair use” quotation, the right to print out hard copies for note-taking or attachment to papers as documentation; and\u00a0they should feel secure in the knowledge that they are not trafficking in stolen property.<\/li>\n
  3. Subscribers, whether individual or institutional, should have the same assurances re the formal licensing of all copyrighted materials included, and schools in particular should enjoy the confidence of knowing that their faculty can legitimately use the content in constructing online coursepacks, assigning essays for class readings, and otherwise making use of this resource in a variety of convenient ways.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"jstor_logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Out of this set of desiderata came the model of the PCCA, which differs from a large-scale content aggregator such as Lexis-Nexis<\/a> or JSTOR<\/a> in several key ways:<\/p>\n