[Dialogue] Living Archive

[John Cock]

Doug, a profound articulation that is crucial to the "living archive"
reality -- getting our archive into history through the likes of us, before
we die, as well as any and all others through use of our "priceless"
archive.
 
This really begins to free up our PJD Team to collaborate with ICA in
Taiwan, the first serious comer wanting to transfer and collaboratively use
Profound Journey Dialog outside the US -- maybe in China, Japan, Nepal,
Bangladesh, Thailand, and Taiwan; and a congregation wanting to use PJD
collaboratively to train their members now as they used RS-I over the past
37 years (Should they join you in jail?) -- and to begin to use PJD with
other churches locally, regionally, and through their greater denomination
network. 
 
So, your spin is profound, mission-centered, and a get-out-of-jail free
ticket, eternally. You are absolved!
 
John


  _____  

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Doug Druckenmiller
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 11:42 AM
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Subject: Copyright: Can I get arrested for doing an artform conversation?



I've read with interest the discussion about the archives and the related
comments on intellectual property rights, copyright and licensing.  I think
it is important to clearly separate the issues so that clear discussion can
be made and we can see where our consensus lies.  I think a bit of context
is necessary for my comments, so I apologize for what will likely be a
longer post than is recommended for email listserves, but my personal story
and experience in this is maybe not well known and potentially useful to the
discussion.

 

I got reengaged with ICA in the spring of 2007 (having been separated since
1982, a 25 year long journey!) when I attended  an ICA-USA think tank in
Chicago.  I was interested in getting access to archival material for my
university research into collaboration engineering.  I am an Associate
Professor at Western Illinois University with a PhD in Business
Administration.  My major interest is in Strategic Information Systems,
especially knowledge management and collaborative systems.  Collaboration
engineering is a newly emerging field that seeks to understand the basic
patterns of group interaction: Brainstorming, organizing (gestalt),
evaluating, consensus building, convergence etc.  The field has evolved from
a focus on electronic meeting systems to a broader focus on facilitation
methods, facilitation design, and how facilitation systems can be embedded
in organizations.  Most recently I've been working with Jon Jenkins on
redesigning the IAF methods database for easier access.  The Town Meeting 76
documents represent a research treasure in my field as it is an example of
large scale collaboration engineering.  We (ICA) designed a collaboration
event and then trained practitioners to deliver it.  The TM76 documents are
empirical evidence of successful collaboration engineering on a large scale.

 

This was just after the now-famous firing of all the staff by the board of
ICA-USA.  I proposed to then board chair, Carolyn Antenen, that we digitize
the archive to improve its accessibility, not just mine, but others
interested in utilizing the archives as a resource. Digitization is an
obvious solution with the necessity of moving the archive to a physical
location where they can be catalogued and digitized.  Funding would be
needed to accomplish this, and there are issues of storage and quality
control in the digitization process.  At the time I saw several
possibilities for doing this:

 

1.      If the ICA is willing to give up copyright to the archival data
(here I am not talking about the JWM files that I understand his family has
control over) and donate the collection to the University (WIU), the
University would store it, digitize it and make it electronically available
online. 

 

2.      The ICA funds the digitization on its own using the University's
digitization capability and services.

 

3.      The ICA does the digitization on its own with its own resources.

 

In any case, quality control of the process would require that someone
familiar with the data monitor results.

 

The ICA was mainly pursuing housing the archives at a university, as there
was no internal capability for true care and maintenance of archival
material.  The first option was not realistic because ICA was not interested
in giving up its copyright, although it would only be on the digital copy
not the original material.  The second is quite expensive, $100,000+ and the
third is also expensive and nearly impossible given limited staff resources
and time.  As we subsequently began to see, option 2 can't be done without
doing option 3.  University partnership is still an ongoing discussion.  Our
emerging partnership with Oklahoma City University is an example.

 

Discussions with the Mathews family were underway at this time, resulting in
the eventual move of the JWM files to Wesleyan Seminary in Washington DC.
Digitization and open access were part of the reason that educational
institutions interested in the content of the archives were involved.  Based
on the reception this past December and the establishment of the JWM archive
at Wesleyan, this is an excellent partnership and collaboration toward that
end.  Betty Pesak and Marge Philbrook prepared the material for transfer to
Wesleyan to insure that wherever there were multiple copies of documents,
they were retained in the archive in Chicago.

 

In October of that year I attended the Living Legacy event and began
discussing with Board Member Judy Lindblad an archive digitization project.
Several alarming conversations with people at the event made me wonder what
had happened to the ICA in the 25 years since I was involved.  Several
people insisted that if you used any ICA methods that you had to pay a
royalty to the ICA.  It seemed that a simple artform conversation was
"private property" and especially if you called what you were doing "ORID."
This seemed exceedingly strange to me, and I remain curious as to where this
idea had come from.  I wondered if the ICA police would arrest me for having
ignorantly been using the artform conversation for the past 25 years in my
teaching.  At least I didn't call it ORID, so maybe I would be forgiven. But
what about charting?  I was in deep trouble.

 

I then did a stupid thing, I volunteered to join the board of directors,
since it was the only way I could see to insure access to the archives, and
maybe I could get time off for good behavior and service rendered.  The
archives were at that point under lock and key in the basement and not
accessible in any real sense.  They also were at risk of flood and the
environment was not conducive to work or long term preservation.  I was
elected to the BOD in November and began a three year term in January of
2008.  As a board member I continued to push for a focus on the archives,
but it was not a concern and discussions about intellectual property were
not encouraged.  "We've already talked about that."  In January 2009 I
became board chair and remain currently in that position.  Work on the
Global Archives remains for me a key objective.  Obviously I've not
completed my sentence yet.

 

Enough context, fast forward to May 2010.  Last week Pat and I attended the
archive sojourn event.  What a wonderful time we had digging deep into the
spirit resources of the archive and continuing the work begun the week
before on processing the archive for eventual digitization.  Slowly the file
cabinets are coming out of the basement to bright available space on the 6th
floor.   In order to digitize the archive (make a digital copy) we must have
a "gold" set of unduplicated material.  As Marge Philbrook has pointed out
many times, the files in the basement contain lots of copies.  By way of
example, Pat and I processed a stack of files about 15" high containing
constructs for "fast, feast and watch."  This was mainly material from
summer '72 research assembly.  I remember the 7 day fast, the wonderful
feast and the watch that we did that summer.  Anyway, after removing all the
duplicated material and keeping 2 copies of everything where possible, we
reduced the stack by about 2/3.  So 5" of material remain, quite a bit of
that is file folders, and if you figure half of what is left is what would
need to be digitized, you are left with about 2 inches of paper that
represents the "gold" set.  This is what is going on in Chicago this month.
We will have a fairly good picture by the end of May of the size of the
mountain, but we will not have climbed it.

 

In the midst of this event I had a revelation of sorts about the process we
are now engaged in.  95% of the work to digitize the archive is this kind of
manual sorting and sifting of the material.  Without doing this, we cannot
digitize anything.  It also requires people familiar with the material.  It
is not something that can be "outsourced" to someone else.  The smallest
part (and least expensive) is the actual making of a digital copy.  This
involves scanning the documents into a PDF format and can be time consuming
if you are thinking of your own personal scanner which is a one page at a
time process.  For example, two of us scanned the 110 page summer 72 spirit
methods manual in about 20 minutes.  At that rate it would take 150 years to
scan the archive!  What we really need is a scanner that has a copy
machine-like document feeder.  This could do the same job in less than a
minute.  I then realized that most copy machines made these days are
document servers.  This means they are connected to your computer network
and you can print to them from your PC, and you can also use them as a
scanner.  Mon Dieu! We have a copier! I wonder if it is also a document
scanner?  Turns out we have two in the building.  They can be set to scan
documents at high speed to our server and made available.  We tested this
system last week and while there are some problems with old paper feeding
properly, we have everything we need to do digitization. Option 3
increasingly looks like the way to go.

 

The only thing we are missing is you!  We need more people to volunteer
their time to do the sorting and reducing work that prepares the material
for scanning.  And then we will need people to do the scanning and to
quality check the results.  We have 25 nicely furnished rooms on the 8th
floor so you can live onsite, work on the archives and visit the beautiful
city of Chicago.  The increasing numbers of people and reunion atmosphere
have been a real joy to all who have attended the sojourn.  I really think
that with a steady stream of volunteers, we could accomplish the
digitization goal much quicker than we think.  Terry is planning another
official Archives sojourn in the fall, but I am sure that Marge Philbrook is
willing to put anyone to work who wants to volunteer at any time.  Once the
archive is fully digital, another task can begin, which is the "tagging" of
the content. This essentially is having a collaboratively built rich index
to the material that allows for easy access of its contents and can be done
from anywhere in the world as long as you have internet access. (Think of
the way you use Google to find information - a word or phrase is all you
need.)

 

Now about copyright.  The ICA-USA will have copyright to the digital form of
the archive based on the "Cairo protocol" described in Wayne's post.  This
will likely be about 2 terabytes of data.  You can purchase a 2 terabyte
drive from your local office products store for about $300.  Last week Bob
Hansen asked me, "Will we have to pay for access to the digitized archive?"
Definitely not!  We intend to put the whole archive and the index to it on
our server and make it available at no cost for download over the web. If
you want a backup copy, go buy a 2 terabyte drive at OfficeMax, come to
Chicago and make your own copy.   Of course, you'll have to wait until its
finished.  You could help with that.

 

I would say that there is a broad consensus that both the original material
in the archives and a digital copy should be freely accessed.  (I'm not
really aware of anyone who holds the contrary position).  The cost of
digital distribution is very small, as we have existing resources to do
this, once things are in digital form.  In Creative Commons terms, this is
the "Attribution license ."  This license lets others distribute, remix,
tweak, and build upon our work, even commercially, as long as they credit
EI/ICA for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses
offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under
Attribution.   I believe this was the original intent for access to this
material and should be applied to both the physical and digital versions.
Please spend some time at www.creativecommons.org/choose.  Answers to two
simple questions determine the License:  "Allow commercial uses of the
work?" and "Allow modifications of the work?"  

 

I hope this settles the IP question about our common memory and heritage.  I
will request that the board of ICA-USA pass a resolution to this effect at
our next meeting.

 

The more interesting question, though, is what about copyright for works
derived from the archive?  (Those works that are owned by the national ICAs
or created by individuals, for example PJD, Top Training manuals, etc.)  The
"Attribution license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon
your work, even commercially, as long as they credit EI/ICA for the original
creation."  PJD is a creation of John Cock and his team; they hold the
copyright and clearly attribute the work to EI/ICA.  I think this meets the
standard of an attribution license.   It is not a product of ICA-USA or even
one of our programs.  It is a tweaked remix built on RS-1.  The license for
PJD is a decision to be made by that team.  While the product is under
development and testing, a limited distribution seems appropriate.  In the
long run, though, I think either "attribution share alike" or "attribution
non-commercial share alike" would be appropriate with other national ICAs.
If the product is distributed outside the ICA, say to a church denomination
or a business organization, a tighter licensing arrangement might be in
order for quality control.  Top Training Manuals are an example of this type
of licensed control and protected content.  But this applies only to the
training manuals published by ICA-USA, the logo, and trade name.  The
reasoning behind this is based in quality control of training and branding
for commercial purposes of the training network.  This does not mean that
the methods themselves are copyrighted.  Anyone is free to develop any
training program they want based on the open source archival material; they
would need to attribute the EI/ICA in their copyright, but they could decide
how to license their own material.

 

You can't get arrested for doing an art-form conversation even if you call
it ORID.

 

 

Doug

 

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