Court cases from the near future -- initial planning meeting
Stuttgart, February 19-21, 2016

0. Who was present:

Clemens Apprich (DCLR, Leuphana University), Balázs Bodó (Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam), Ted Byfield (independent scholar, moderator of <nettime>, NYC), Gary Hall (Coventry University), Mario Doulis (Merz Akademie, Stuttgart), Rosemary Grennan (MayDay Rooms. London), Maximilian Lehner (Akademie Schloss Solitude, art, science & business), Björn Kühn (artist, Stuttgart), Antonia Maja?a (Institute for Contemporary Art,TU Graz), Marcell Mars (Memory of the World/Multimedia Institute, Zagreb), Tomislav Medak (Memory of the World/Multimedia Institute, Zagreb), Anna Romanenko (artist, Stuttgart), Dubravka Sekuli? (ETH Zürich), Femke Snelting (Constant, Brussels), Felix Stalder (moderator of <nettime>, Zurich University of Arts), Dennis Tenen (Columbia University, NYC), Milica Tomic (Institute for Contemporary Art, TU Graz), Sophie-Charlotte Tieroff (Akademie Schloss Solitude, art, science & business), Alan Toner (political activist, Berlin), Marek Tuszynski (Tactical Technology Collective, Berlin), Mira Witte (Akademie Schloss Solitude, art, science & business)

1. What happened in the Stuttgart meeting:

We convened in Stuttgart to discuss what activities both we individually and our organizational structures could develop to support the cause of digital libraries that provide universal access to books and articles, sometime in disregard of the copyright regulation and commercial interests of publishers. While Marcell and Tom initially proposed to pursue a process of research play that would lead up to an enactment of a court case against the Public Library and/or Science Hub projects, the experience by some of the people in the meeting with the copyright reform suggest that the efforts made to transform the legal regulation always resulted in more restrictive environment. Thus we should better separate the deffensive - lega - and offensive - political/public - strategy. The sentiment is that we can make a better public case for these libraries by providing a looser yet broader coalition that will focus on providing them with stronger support in terms of technological infrastructure and redundancy, research on the use scenarios, documenting of discontent with the publishing industry, publicly arguing the case for universal access and these libraries, and ultimately broadening the coalition by bringing on board new individual and organizational allies, particularly with respect to the multiplicity of global positions.

The coalition will assume a new identity -- Society for Library Access/SLAX.net -- and will act separate from Custodians.online, which remains a more radical, activist flank of our activities, and individual library projects in our orbit -- Aaaaaarg, Monoskop, Ubu, Public Library/Memory of the World, Libgen etc.

The activities that should have taken the form of enactment of a court case will take another format - that of forensis as developed by Research Arcitecture and foregrounding the process of providing evidence in a public forum, a form that is less legally codified and more politically situated.

Particular attention was placed on the acts of acknowledging and normalizing practices of book sharing that are now part and parcel of educational and scientific process, with emphasis on developing a course in amateur librarianship that could be developed together and taught at the universities.

The meeting was highly productive, with a number of follow-up proposals that we list in the next segment and that will continue to be developed. As this is a summary, we kindly ask everyone to let us know what was left out and you think is worth pursuing. We indicate some action points at the end of this document, but again we're sure much was left out. More detailed notes to refresh your memory you can, thanks to the wonderful note-taking skills of Femke Snelting, find in the pads here: http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/courtcasesfromthefuture and here: http://pad.constantvzw.org/p/courtcases.activities.

2. Proposed future activities:

• Society for Library Access/SLAX.net
  • create an online resource and identity (mediawiki), in part to involve people who contacted us in the aftermath of the Custodians.online letter
  • write project description(s) and statement(s) of principles based on the proposal by the strategy working group
  • focuses: genealogy, technological infrastructure, research, discontent, political debate
  • public record of affiliations through statements of support
  • outreach to potential further contributors and coalition members

• Diversification of the coalition
  • potential meeting in June in Mumbai, at Columbia Global Center, with the funding from Columbia for Digital Justice --> partners Lawrence Liang, Alternative Law Center & CAMP (if not in Mumbai then Santiago)
  • if that doesn't work, Leuphana (with partners) might seek money with Hivos

• Amateur Libriarian - A Course in Critical Pedagogy
  • continued development of the course
  • develop and find funding a semester-long course for the IZK in Graz
  • course at MayDay Rooms
  • critical computing summer-school at Columbia
  • MOOC

• Constant, IZK & MI2 project proposal
  • Constant's activities with legal experts at Sciencespo on copyright reform
  • Interface to the Law (Constant)
  • forensis (IZK) in collaboration with Steirischer Herbst or Elevate in Graz
  • Project with Piet Zwart Media Design Experimental publishing
• 
  
• Network of mirrors of online libraries
  • create mirrors of ubu, aaaaarg, motw, libgen
  • MayDay rooms hosting mirrors, and event around the deposit
  • Ubu already mirrored in Zurich University of the Arts, Art & Media, potentially also at the Coventry University
• 
  
• Research projects

• Publications
  • a series of publications, potentailly Primer on Public Library
  • with muptliple publishers: CUP, OH, Post Media Series, Meson Press; An anthology of the subject

• Mailing list

3. Action points

Wiki & network:

• Marcell, Dennis & Ted will set up a mediawiki at SLAX.net

• Alan, Tom, Dubravka, Milica, Rosemary and Dennis will work on the genealogy/archaeology of the access to knowledge/Public Library

• Dennis, Felix, Femke, Bodo will extend the list of institutions and individuals we aim to reach out to and will build a public record of affiliations

• Ted, Marcell, Dennis, Bodo and Rosemary will work on the action defense portofolio

• Bodo will work works on a scrapbook to document the growing discontent in the domain in which shadow libraries are also active: academic publishing, libraries, peer review, etc.

• potential people to include: Chris Kelty, Joe Karaganis, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Shannon Mattern, Julia Reda, more librarians?

Legal defense in the Aaaaarg case:

• Femke will check with CRIDS people if they want to follow and Gary will check with his school

Follow-up meetings:

• Dennis, Clemens & Tom will work on potential follow-up meeting outside of the global North, potentially in Mumbai in June (Lawrence Liang, ALF and CAMP are on board)

• Marcell will work out with Kenneth Goldsmith the meeting in Istria on the occasion of the 20th anniversery of UBU

• Bodo will try to get the Russians to join us for one of the next meetings

New activities:

• Milica, Antonija, Marcell & Tomi will develop PEEK proposal (deadline May) for a semester-long course

• Femke, Ted and Dubravka will work on "Interface of the Law" project

• Femke will work together with SciencesPo  to involve them in the issues central to our activities

• Femke, Milica, Rosemary and Tom will continue developing a proposal for a project that could carry future activities: course, forensis, legal research...

Funding:

• Tom, Marcell and Milica will work on the PEEK proposal

• Felix will see if there's something that can be followed-up upon within his project with Cornelia Sollfrank

• Clemens will pursue possibilities to get Hivos funding for developing activities outside the global North

• Dennis can look into Columbia Global Innovation fund

• Gary is already involved in the Horizon 2020 strand on Open Knowledge