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"We, a broad coalition from over 20 countries, of hundreds of thousands of citizens, users, consumers, organizations, artists, hackers, members of the free culture movement, economists, lawyers, teachers, students, researchers, scientists, activists, workers, unemployed, entrepreneurs, creators… We invite all citizens to make this Charter theirs, share it and put it into practice. We invite all governments, multinationals and institutions urgently to listen to it, understand it and enforce it."

"At a time when we have the technologies to enable global access to and distributed processing of scientific research and data, legal and technical restrictions are making it difficult to connect the dots. Even when research and data is made public, it's often locked up by regimes or contracts that prohibit changing file formats or languages, integrating data, semantic enrichment, text mining and more. These restrictions sharply limit the impact of published research, and prevent us from exploiting the potential of the Web for accelerating scientific discovery. In the Scholar's Copyright Project, Science Commons develops tools and resources for expanding and enhancing open access (OA) to published research and data. We believe that knowledge-sharing systems and formats based on the paper metaphor block innovation, and that open access is prerequisite for finding new ways to reap the value of the vast amounts of public research now being produced. For details on the resources we offer, continue reading below."

"...If rights remain as tightly controlled and as expensive as they are now, nonfiction will be the province of the entirely new or the overly familiar. Dazzling books with newly created art, text and multimedia will far outnumber works filled with historical materials. Only a few well-heeled companies will have the wherewithal to create gee-whiz multimedia book-like products that require permissions, and these projects will most likely focus on highly popular subjects. History's outsiders and untold stories will be left behind. We treat copyrights as individual possessions, jewels that exist entirely by themselves. I'm obviously sympathetic to that point of view. But source material also takes on another life when it's repurposed. It becomes part of the flow, the narration, the interweaving of text and art in books and e-books. It's essential that we take this into account as we re-imagine permissions in a digital age. When we have a new model for permissions, we will have new media. Then all of us - authors, readers, new-media innovators, rights holders - will really see the stories that words and images can tell. "