 The invited testimony, we had three individuals signed up for the official general public testimony. I'd like them to come forward. Bart Massey from Clackamas County, Pete Forsythe from Moteloma County, and Amy Sample Ward from the Meyer Memorial Trust, please. Again, I would ask that you, uh, you know. Well, yeah. Uh, in line of time, I'd like to just reserve my testimony to the written copy that you all have. Okay. I'd like to get up there with them, wouldn't you? Of course. Oh, that's right. That's right. Which I called you there for. That's why I'd like you to do that. So, all right. So, Bart, would you like to present first, please? And of course, again, as you probably know, you have to identify yourself and things like that for the record, please. Senate President Courtney, uh, Majority Leader Hunt, the other senators and representatives here. Thank you very much for, um, agreeing to listen today. Uh, I'm Bart Massey. I'm an associate professor of computer science at Portland State University. I'm a faculty member on the Oregon Master of Software Engineering program, a proprietor of BartMassey.com, a technology business. I'm technologist and resident at the Open Technology Business Center in Beaverton, um, and secretary of the X.org Foundation, among other things, um, and, uh, I want to be clear that I'm not speaking for any of these organizations today, but rather form myself as a concerned Oregon citizen and one of the leaders of the open source movement in the state. I, you know, in the interest of brevity, I'm going to shorten my prepared testimony. You have the full written testimony in front of you, but I just want to briefly, um, qualify myself. I've been participating in open source activities since before that nomenclature existed. I've been one of the people in the state who has been a leader in getting the open source community built around here. I was fortunate enough to receive a substantial grant from Google a couple years ago, um, to develop open technology in the state and, uh, was honored to stand with the governor in receiving that award. Um, my students build the most advanced amateur sounding rockets in the world, um, here at Portland State using, um, open source and open technology. I, um, have served on a number of committees and organizations in Oregon devoted to open source as a basis for Oregon economic development. So while I'm not an attorney, I am recognized as a local expert on the topic of open source intellectual property law. I have lectured attorneys and, uh, business people on that topic in the past. So I just want to, I'm here today because, you know, it's really important to me that you folks understand what the open source economy is doing in the state of Oregon and how, um, the actions you take today may impact that economy. Uh, open source and related open business models are one of the most rapidly growing areas in the information economy. Um, the year over year of growth of open source has been in the 30% range and that doesn't show any signs of slowing down. And we've been very fortunate and we've had wise leaders in the state and through those we've been really successful in positioning Oregon internationally as a center of open source activity. Uh, it's, there's thousands of jobs in Oregon directly related to open source. Um, there, and we're really developing a whole new micro economy around, um, open source knowledge work, open source IT, web open source technologies, um, embedded technologies, et cetera. So this has really become a driver for us of a new tech economy and it's driven by the international perception that Oregon is a place that is friendly to open source and is a leader in open source activities. And I only found out about this issue Tuesday night and I think the way I found out is instructive. Um, I read an article in the Linux Weekly News, uh, which is an online publication which internationally is one of the major venues for, um, dissemination of information about open source stuff. And the Linux Weekly News article pointed to a really nice analysis by an attorney, James Grimondon, who, um, is not an interested party in this debate but presents a real cogent description of the situation here and what's going on. And I have to say that, you know, this piece in this article really represented a black eye for our state's efforts in open source. It, um, you know, the other thing that we were known for internationally is our failure on two previous attempts to pass groundbreaking open source, um, legislation that would allow, you know, encourage the adoption of open source by the state government itself. And, you know, my fear is that the current debate furthers what I think is an erroneous impression, the impression that the state government isn't committed to open process and development. And that makes it harder to do what I'm trying to do in developing that open source economy. Um, you know, I think the first principles that people have talked to, the previous testimonies talked about are also important. I think that it's clear that you folks in the legislature, you know, have made laws about dissemination of our stuff, about open meetings, about freedom of information that, um, really support the notion, which I think is an admirable one, that we should have the broadest and widest possible access to the information about our state government, what it does and how it works. And I think that, you know, while I am not a lawyer, I think that the copyright status of the material claimed is at best questionable. And in that situation, I believe it would be a mistake to charge taxpayers for expensive and uncertain litigation to protect something we should be open anyway. In terms of a risk-benefit argument, it seems to me that, given the substantial risk of economic risk of going forward and the substantial economic impact that you'll have on the state by, you know, by going forward with the suit, that what we should do is to do the right thing, to improve our tech international reputation, help boost an important part of our tech economy, probably get the will of the citizens of the state and perhaps save money in the long run by doing so. And for that reason, I really encourage you to, really quish the copyright and open these materials up. Thank you very much. Thank you. And we also have your, as you said, we have your testimonies in front of us. Yes, please proceed. Senate President Courtney, Majority Leader Hunt. My name is Pete Forsythe, and I'm here today as an individual, but I also feel that I represent a broad and somewhat difficult to define group of people who participate in the open-source world and in producing open content generally, both in a technical sense and in sort of in a broader social and cultural sense. And I'll get into that in a moment. I want to make it clear from the outset that there are clearly questions about the legal basis for the assertion of copyright. That's not what I'm going to be getting into. I'm going to be looking at this purely from a, or almost entirely from a public policy point of view. I'm not an attorney. I am not really, I don't feel that I'm qualified to take a strong position on the legalities involved. So the place that I'll be coming from is generally that it's within the power of this body either to take a different policy within the constraints of the law or as legislators to make changes to the law. So what I'm going to be focusing on is what I think are the policy concerns that should drive whatever decision is best in that realm. And the one legal point that I do want to touch on is the Creative Commons style licensing that's come up. And I just want to be sure that it's understood both that Creative Commons is an organization. There are other organizations like the Free Software Foundation that have prepared standard and open licenses a number of, a menu of different licenses that can apply to different cases as has been said, but I think should be reiterated. There are different licenses that do or don't allow for commercial use, do or don't allow for derivative works. So I want to be sure that everyone understands that just saying something like Creative Commons does leave a lot of those decisions open to whatever might be appropriate to the case at hand. And the other point about this sort of licensing is that it's something that's becoming really a strong foundation of a lot of things that's going on in our culture, in our economy. Products that you might be familiar with like the Firefox web browser, Wikipedia, the Apache web server that supports most of the websites that are out there on the internet, and the open office free office suite. None of these products would exist without this kind of licensing. And it's probably more than I can get into to explain that there are probably better experts than me to get into that even in this room. But I really want to be sure that you understand that it's becoming a very core and important concept. And it's a recognizable license increasingly. When people see that there's a Creative Commons license attached to something, there's a sense of relief that they don't have to read every line of it with a fine-toothed comb. They have some trust in the organization who's built that license and it allows you to kind of cut through some of the difficulty of negotiating contracts. So, if I could get back to the group that I see myself as representing up here. It's a group that's a very diverse group and it's a little bit difficult to say exactly what the boundaries are of who this is. But it's a group of people who I think are very engaged and active in the state and having an increasing effect on the state, a positive effect on the state. But we don't have, you know, we're not a nonprofit. We don't have a certain tax status. We don't have bylaws. We don't have even a budget because, you know, basically what it is is people who see the possibility of motivated individuals with a bit of individual attention to trying to organize a network and work better with others can get a whole lot done without having to incorporate, without having to raise money. There's a lot that can be done without having to spend a lot of money. So, of necessity, it's not like there's a group that can give me the authority to speak for them and I understand that might be kind of an unfamiliar position. So, basically, you know, I think in a technical sense I'm really just speaking for myself, to discuss this with a large number of people with a lot of interests who are very concerned about these issues. And I would welcome any questions along those lines. I do think it's very important to note that most of us, as I think Bart and others have alluded to, generally have no business interest in the matters under consideration here. It's not, there may be a few exceptions to that here and there. But, you know, the general driving force is wanting to create resources and enhance the civic dialogue in the state. I think that we see common cause with groups like Justia that do have a business interest, but we're not here looking to do well for ourselves. So, examining public policy, to my thinking there are two relevant ways of looking at that, which are, I think that the interest here is both to make sure that bad stuff isn't done and to make sure that the law or policy doesn't get in the way of good stuff getting done. So, I think there's been some discussion of the dangers associated with other organizations presenting, publishing inaccurate versions of the Organ Revised Statutes, either willfully or by mistake. I think that's an important concern. But I'm definitely not convinced that copyright is the best tool to address that concern. My real passion here is within the realm of not impeding positive uses of the Organ Revised Statutes. So, I've listed out a few examples here. I'm not going to run them all down in my verbal testimony, but trying to present some of the kinds of issues that come up when the public wants to interact with the law. I think I would like to respond to Representative Rosenbaum's question regarding why it would be important to have the headers in addition to the law. And I think that there's an important aspect to, for instance, if someone wants to publish a section of the law on a blog, generally what they're doing is they're looking to start a discussion. And having qualified expert opinion is generally a very good way to start a discussion. So, if there are headers that clarify what's contained in the law, or that in any way make it more accessible, I notice in one of the exhibits here that things like the table of contents and index are part of what's included and what's being claimed as creative. That sort of thing is essential to being able to have a discussion, to having a starting point for effective discussion. So, let's see where I'm at. Oh, and I do, I really think that Amy should speak a little bit to you because she is involved with one of the most exciting projects in this area. Connectopedia is something that... I'll let her talk more about that, but it's something that a substantial investment and a lot of hopes are riding on and something that would definitely be affected by the decisions made here today. I think there's been a lot of discussion about revenue and I think that's been... I would just like to suggest that possibly, and I don't know, but one of the lines of the road science analogy, maybe just moving towards getting that funding, move back to the general fund as a way to address that, maybe the very expectation that this body be able to support its work through selling its own product. Possibly that's the problem, I don't know. I'm sure that you're all more expert on that than me. And then as to copyright, I think it's important to bear in mind that copyright is something that allows an organization to protect its ownership interest in something. So I really think it's just the wrong tool for the kind of purpose that's being discussed here as a blogger, Kar-Hism, that you're probably familiar with, pointed out on my blog about this, taking an extreme case, if someone were to just publish on their website Oregon Law and then make up their own version of Oregon Law, copyright law would be absolutely powerless to address that situation. They could completely fabricate their own version of the law. So I think that illustrates very clearly that while there may be a legitimate concern there, I think a different kind of law would be appropriate. There's actually an example that I've become aware of recently, which is that the Oregon State Seal, which was created in 1859 and is clearly not subject to copyright law. It's in the public domain. There actually is a statute, and I have it cited here. I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but there's a statute governing its use, which basically says if you use the state seal in such a way as to deceive the public or falsely imply an endorsement of the state of Oregon, there are consequences for that. And I think that anything looking to protect the Oregon Revised Statutes, which are clearly a very valued resource, I think that something along those lines that's completely independent of copyright law is probably a better way to go. And I think I'll conclude with that. Thank you. Well, since you've changed your mind, I might as well fill in. So, thank you, Chairman Courtney and Majority Leader Hunt and the rest of the committee. I'll try and keep this very brief. I have been... You have to identify yourself. I'm Amy Sampleward, and I currently work for Private Foundation, Myer Memorial Trust. I'm not speaking on behalf of them, but on behalf of 18 months now as one of the project directors for Connectopedia, which launched publicly last week, Connectopedia is a a new form, if you will, of a wiki in which many of you know of a wiki when you think of Wikipedia, and then it's that editable form of a website, and this adds database functionality. It is free and open source, and it's also free for anyone to use. It was designed with program officers, nonprofits, and state agency staff in mind, so that they could have a centralized location to share information, to post best practices, to, you know, link to data, anything that would come up in programmatic work day to day, so that program officers were able to find the same reports that nonprofits were using to base their programs off of. State agencies working with nonprofits could be looking at the same data, and so forth. I believe that it works depends on free open access to information and being able to cite directly what you're talking about and link to it, or contain a conversation about that idea or topic. However, it's framed, but to do so for the benefit of the community as rightly as you can, which would mean direct quotations and citations, and not having access to, as Pete said, the headers or contextual annotation really diminishes the impact and the success of those conversations and not just the conversations, but the further information, data, et cetera, that is based on what their services are providing based on the law. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them, but you do also have my written testimony. Thank you. Any questions? The witnesses? Thank you for your testimony. Appreciate you coming here today and talking with us.