The right to read is the right to mine: Text and data mining copyright exceptions introduced in the UK
« New copyright exceptions to text and data mining for non-commercial research have recently come into effect and this is welcome news for UK researchers and research, argues Ross Mounce [Dr Ross Mounce is a BBSRC-funded postdoc at the University of Bath] Here he provides a brief overview of the past issues discouraging text and data mining and what the future holds now that these exceptions have been introduced. But despite legal barriers being removed, many technical barriers still remain. Furthermore it remains to be decided what formally constitutes ‘non-commercial’ research.
After eight long years including not one but two expert-led reviews of intellectual property; new copyright exceptions, some of which in particular will enable and empower UK academic research came into force on June 1st 2014. All disciplines are set to benefit from this: the humanities, the social sciences, science, technology and medicine.
Of particular interest to myself and other researchers is the ‘Exception for copying of works for use by text and data analytics’. In order to understand why this is so important, let me take you back to how it was before the copyright exception came into force (and how the legal situation still is for researchers in most other European countries):
Content Mining: mining one or more types of media for information; media as data (Image credit: DeclanTM (Flickr, CC BY) (…) »
