How trade agreements harm open access and open source
By Jeremy Malcolm
Open access isn’t explicitly covered in any of the secretive trade
negotiations that are currently underway, including the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP), and the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA). But that doesn’t
mean that they won’t have a negative impact on those seeking to publish
or use open access materials.
First, online publishers sometimes apply TPM (Technological
Protection Measures, which implement DRM) to works that have been
published under open access licences, or place such works behind
paywalls, thereby frustrating the intention of the author that the works
should be made freely available. In both cases, circumventing the TPM
or paywall block, in order to gain access to the work as the author
intended, can be a civil or criminal offense.
