Creationism and the creative commons madness - Part 3: The arts and the humanities
The problems with copyright licensing in the arts and the humanities
Understanding the different nature of copyright restrictions in the arts and the humanities requires some minimum understanding of the general situation with creative commons restrictions in the commercial arts. This is the reason I attempted a discussion in relation to the commercial arts in the previous article under Part 2. My approach is that, if creative commons restrictions are gradually abandoned in commercial disciplines, then there is absolutely no reason for these restrictions to be stricter in disciplines that make limited or no profit at all, particularly when such disciplines claim to promote knowledge. A discipline with such attitude in the arts and the humanities is archaeology, which will be the main focus of this article.
The situation with copyrights and intellectual property restrictions for the protection of archaeological work is a lot worse than any of the cases discussed for the commercial arts. Not only every little thing included in a scientific book or periodical is subject to creative commons restrictions (e.g. text, photographs, charts, graphs, drawing, etc.), but creative commons rights seem to extent even beyond the lifetime of the person writing or the lifetime of the company publishing. Furthermore, in many occasions the original material that was used to produce an intellectual argument is automatically subject to the same restrictions as the actual study following it. The system is so strict that makes everybody wonder if archaeological work aims in the the promotion of scientific knowledge. With such restrictions, the 'promotion' of knowledge is limited, unless it is taking place inside a controlled environment and under controlled conditions (e.g. in university for the needs of written assignments). And is this controlled environment ideal for the circulation of new ideas, or is it just thought to be ideal because it is the only one available?
Many people in academia would argue that the above case is not true for every field in the arts and the humanities, and everything I am writing in this article is the result of personal bad experience from Classical Archaeology. This may in fact be true, but again, I could challenge these people by asking them to demonstrate to me how difficult it is to access primary sources in fields other than archaeology within the arts and the humanities. For example, if a researcher in religious studies or history only needs to combine texts that are already published and can be found in a library, then his/her only hassle is to quote the original authors of these texts in his/her own work. The situation is completely different if the researcher needs to travel to another country; physically access material that belongs to somebody else; do that in a system that is regulated by a plethora of unknown laws; get permissions to study and photograph the material; and then, visually present it in his/her own study, which will be published by another party in another country.
To explain what it takes to conduct research in Classical Archaeology, I am planning to discuss the whole process as a series of steps, which contain legally established obstacles to be considered every time a new idea is to be put down on paper. My aim is to demonstrate that the amounts of energy wasted in satisfying the demands of this absurd intellectual property mechanism are enough to put people off and try to avoid any interaction with their primary sources, leading researchers to library-based studies that repeat existing information in different syntheses. In my opinion, even if this mechanism is thought to be there in order to protect new ideas, in reality it is only there to decapitate them.
The surreal case of Classical Archaeology
Whoever thought of archaeology as a journey of knowledge, curiosity, intellectual development and fun probably thought about it right, except perhaps of the fun part. There can surely be lots of fun in this journey; however, once the archaeologist in abandoned inside the dark and Daedalic corridors of the Legislation Labyrinth, every bit of fun flies out of the window in seconds.
As with Theseus, the archaeologist needs to be fully alert and ready to fight against the monstrous Minotaur, who will appear to feed on the archaeologist's intellectual flesh. The more complex the Labyrinth, the more the chances for the archaeologist to be eaten alive; the less complex the Labyrinth, the more the chances for the archaeologist to be victorious. There are, however, two differences between Theseus and the brave archaeologist: firstly, the former never had the option to choose a manageable Labyrinth, while the latter can definitely choose a suitable Labyrinth if there is enough information before entering. Secondly, the former decided to depart on his adventure knowing the dangers; by contrast, the latter realises the dangers when it is too late to do anything.
The archaeological adventure begins by starring towards the unknown. The archaeologist resembles Christopher Columbus standing on the Atlantic's shore and starring at the mast of a travelling ship while sinking into the horizon. It is the moment when he realises that the earth is round and wishes to explore its circumference. There might have been myths or stories from people who crossed the ocean to find themselves in another land; still, any myth cannot be true unless tested. Just like Columbus, the brave archaeologist sails off on a journey of adventure and personal development to face the unknown, ignoring that this could lead him to the Land of the Bureaucrats, a place that makes Kafka's Das Schloss look like a nursery. But before anything like this happens, the archaeologist is sat there thinking between the plausible and the unknown, and everything begins with an idea.
Who owns the original idea?
In archaeology, any new idea is the result of intellectual stimulation, which motivates the scholar to produce a text reflecting the reasoning behind his/her intellectual stimulus. In theory, the idea belongs to the person who originally got it and should stay with that person until he/she willingly decides to make it available to the public; in practice, however, things are not that simple.
Although the idea will generate an entire study, the practical building-up of this study requires the mediation, consultation and approval of a large number of people, who may not only apply changes to the original idea, but could also demand to be cited next to the person who originally thought about it. The list of consultants and negotiators between the scholar and his/her idea is long. Firstly, the archaeologist needs to discuss the idea with some older and longer established researchers in order to see if it makes any sense. Secondly, if the archaeologist is a university based researcher, he/she needs to find a senior staff member to coach the project. Thirdly, the idea needs to be practically tested on some sort of archaeological material, which needs to be accessed at an archaeological dig, a warehouse, a museum or at a library if published. Access to such material requires more people deciding on the final outcome. Fourthly, if additional scientific tests are required, some connections need to be established with scientific laboratories or relevant institutions. During this procedure, the original idea is not only exposed to a number of people who could decide to keep it for themselves, but the researcher is in a situation where he/she might be forced to sell off the paternity of his/her original idea in exchange for help. Legally speaking, there is absolutely no legislation, which can guarantee that the idea belongs to the person who originally got it. It all comes down to the honesty of the people who will interact with the project.
Furthermore, many scholars feel that after the end of their project, the final product of their intellectual work should become a commercial product if a potential publisher is convinced to publish it. Archaeology is not supposed to be targeting a large audience of consumers in the commercial sense, but an audience of people who are interested in specific ideas. Again, this audience forms a small market and the products or archaeological thought can be sold to it for profit. The publisher is not the only person to enjoy some profit, but also the archaeologist, although not always in the financial sense: the scholar is likely to gain some extra points on his/her publication record, which can be cashed later in the job market. Whichever the case, if there is some benefit to be gained, there is also a price to be paid in exchange: if a publisher becomes involved, then the intellectual ownership of the archaeologists work will be passed on to the publisher, even though the archaeologist will still claim the paternity of his/her original idea. The situation is to become worse if the publisher's reviewers decide that the original idea needs modifications to suit the commercial requirements of a larger audience. If the final product changes, then the scholar will still claim the paternity of his/her original idea; the question, however, is “which one”?
The point that I am trying to make here is that even though there are strict restrictions in archaeology concerning intellectual property rights, the archaeologist who has an original idea and wishes to generate a new study is left completely alone against people that have established their position through time and can control the flow of such new ideas. In my opinion, even if third parties involved in archaeological research are honest and characterised by professionalism, the system has flaws allowing such third parties to turn against the archaeologist and become manipulative. The fact that no mechanism is set to protect such original ideas, unlike the situation in the commercial arts, is only enhancing more bullying and more theft of intellectual property.
Who owns the original material and who is allowed to study it?
One of the most difficult problems in archaeological research is finding primary archaeological material to test the hypothesis of an original argument. Locating and studying such material is not simple. The material belongs to third parties and any access or inclusion of it in an article or other type of volume is subject to several restrictions.
Firstly, there needs to be an official permit from the 'owner' of the material, which is treated as his/her intellectual property, although in reality it is not. In reality, the people who generated this archaeological material are long dead and their material culture is buried together with them. So, why does material culture become an intellectual property as soon as it is dug out of the ground? To me, this does not make much sense, but this is how the system works.
Secondly, the material is likely to belong to more than one individuals or larger bodies, which complexes things worse. The legal 'ownership' of an archaeological material might vary under circumstances and there will be some examples in the following paragraphs. Such examples will only demonstrate how surreal the situation is.
Thirdly, nobody can guarantee that accessing such archaeological material is going to be successful. It is more than possible that the 'owners' of the material might decide not to grant permit to the archaeologist to study it, either because they want to do it themselves or because the material has been reserved for another scholar. In such cases, the completion of a study can be jeopardised and a second plan needs to be put in action to find new material. As a result, in many cases it is not the archaeologist deciding his/her research questions and research strategies, but the nature of the material he/she can access. The archaeologist cannot examine what is ideal for a specific study, but needs to compromise with whatever is available, even if such material is not suitable to produce the right information. To put it down in simple words, one cannot get what he/she wants but must settle with whatever available.
The legislation for the 'ownership' of archaeological artefacts varies from country to country. On one hand, there are countries with lenient laws, which allow private individuals or companies to own such material. On the other hand, there are countries with strict and often harsh laws, which only allow state bodies to own archaeological artefacts, with the whole system being regulated by a single central authority. The fairer of all norms, however, is a combination of both systems, where state and private parties possess ownership rights under the monitoring and supervision of a government-based authority.
What is fascinating and annoying at the same time, is the way the laws of some countries perceive the 'ownership' of archaeological artefacts. The reason I use quotation marks is because in real life the ownership of any object relates to the actual object only. To give you an extended example, the mug that I use at work to drink coffee in the mornings is a nicely decorated purple mug with white flowers, which is one among thousands of identical mugs that were industrially produced by a certain pottery factory. The reason I know this specific mug is mine, is only because I was the one that bought it. The reason other people at work know this mug is mine, is because there is no other identical mug in the office, and they can only see it on top of my desk. By contrast, they know that my desk at work is not really mine: even though the company has allocated it to myself only, the actual furniture belongs to the company. Whatever the case, if a third party decides to take a picture of my mug standing on top of my desk and post it on social media, this person neither needs the company's nor my own permission to do so.
The situation might be different if an object is personalised. If somebody decided to take a picture of my car and post it on social media, then I would have expected that person to contact me and ask me if I am fine with that. The reason is that, although my car is one among many identical cars produced by the same factory in the same red colour, its numberplate is not. Since anybody can track my name through the numberplate, I would have found it reasonable to be contacted by the person taking the picture, or if I was not be reached, I would have expected that person to black the numberplate of my car when the picture was to be posted on social media. This would have been the best way to protect my privacy. Again, the law understands that this is not always possible. For example, if a street camera is filming a highway accident and I happen to pass by with my car, then my car, its numberplate and my face will be on that video, together with hundreds of other drivers. Realising that it will not be possible to contact every individual driver and request permission to use that video as evidence in court, the law states that any caption at open public spaces cannot be considered a threat to a person's privacy. Despite what the law says, I know a lot of people that get annoyed when they see a photographer taking a picture of the scenery when they happen to walk by; and in a similar manner, I once found myself in an embarrassing situation, when my motorcycle's numberplate was recorded at the background of a porn film at one of the Greek islands in the late 1990s.
The reason I brought all these examples up was to demonstrate that taking a picture of an ordinary modern object, even if this is highly personalised, does not require the consideration of legal complications. By contrast, taking a picture of an archaeological artefact is by far legally overcomplicated. The reason is because an archaeological artefact is both a plain object and an intellectual object at the same time; therefore, it can be the stimulus of intellectual work. In this case, 'ownership' not only relates to the actual material object, but also to any intellectual property that could potentially be produced out of it. Theoretically, this understanding of archaeological artefacts sounds fair; practically, however, it only leads to extremely surreal situations. As this is going to be my favourite part of the article, I am planning to present some real examples, related to the British and Greek cases of artefact 'ownership'.
Owning archaeological material in Britain
In Britain laws favour land owners, developers and private individuals. For example, if an archaeological artefact is found under my Mr. Ash's plot of land, then Mr. Ash has every right to keep it. Technically, the ownership of Mr. Ash's land also includes whatever is hidden underneath it. Furthermore, it makes absolutely no difference if Mr. Ash's family were not the people who once produced the material culture found under their plot of land; if they find it today, they can still keep it.
On the other hand, the state and the local governments see that any archaeology hidden under any plot of private or public land is of some public interest or national importance. The people that live in the same place today, or even the entire country, have every right to know what these artefacts relate to and which culture produced them. This is also the basic principle behind heritage protection and management. In order to do so, every private or public party is obliged by law to conduct some archaeological investigations before applying any significant modifications to the land, and make sure that any archaeology underneath it is properly recorded and stored for future reference.
Following the above example, if Mr. Ash wishes to modify his land, he will first need to hire an archaeological unit to investigate, rescue-excavate and record the archaeology. Archaeological units are usually private but monitored by government bodies, while they also comply to certain quality-related professional standards. Before doing any work, it is an established practice for the landlord or the developer to sign off the legal ownership of the archaeological artefacts under the land to the excavators and the local council, and to pay so that they can be recorded, conserved if necessary, and safe-stored to be accessed any time in the future. How the archiving and deposition of such artefacts is done varies under circumstances and no further emphasis will be given for the needs of this article. What is important to know, however, is that the archaeology is recorded and the artefacts are preserved by the county council or county museums in agreement with the excavators and the landlords/developers.
Of course, there can be a variety of other scenarios too: there might be occasions when the landlord decides to keep or is forced to keep the finds anyway; there might be sites of such national importance that the government decides to intervene, conduct long-term excavations and build an archaeological park to be visited by the public in the future; museums might express interest in exhibiting archaeological artefacts from specific sites, the ownership of which will be passed on to them; small community interest groups might decide to conduct excavations at a site under the landlord’s permission and the local authorities' supervision, deciding privately on who will own the artefacts; and finally, a university might be invited to excavate a site for training purposes, and pass the artefacts on to the local authorities under the landlord's consent. In theory and in most cases, the archaeological artefacts will end up is some sort of warehouse, the ownership of which will belong jointly to the archaeological unit that excavated them and to the public body that is responsible for the heritage management in that specific region (e.g. museum, county council, etc.). By the term ownership I not only mean the physical possession of an archaeological artefact, but also the intellectual property deriving from it.
If a researcher wishes to access and study this material, he/she will need to contact the party responsible for storing it and discuss the terms under which the material will be studied and published. My personal experience has shown me that British county councils and archaeological units are open to such suggestions and are highly supportive to people who wish to study archaeological materials. Of course, the excavators need to agree with that too. The reason is because artefacts come in large quantities and every archaeologist willing to study and publish them is more than welcome, provided that this person has received proper training and knows what he/she is doing; after all, every effort contributes to the promotion of archaeology and the production of new knowledge. The only difficult part for external researchers is that they need arrange the technical details for accessing any studying the archaeological material. This requires figuring out a convenient time to visit the storing facilities, finding some free space to work, and doing this by producing minimum disturbance to other people working in the same environment.
British laws also allow private individuals to dig out of the ground and keep small archaeological artefacts at will, provided that these are declared to and recorded by the state and the local authorities. Such parties can be private collectors and ordinary members of the public who are curious about antiquities. A weird case of private individuals going after archaeological artefacts is metal detectorists. According to the British legislation, there is absolutely nothing wrong with somebody buying a metal detector and digging finds out of the ground. The only legal restriction is that this has to be carried out on public land; if a metal detected find is dug out of private land, then the legal owner of the find is the landlord and not the metal detectorist.
As an archaeologist coming from the Mediterranean, accustomed to the idea that treasure-hunting and metal-detecting are banned activities, seeing this situation in Britain causes me great discomfort. The reasons why British legislation allows metal-detecting are probably three: (1) in theory, such finds are dug out of the topsoil and subsoil of agricultural land after deep ploughing, which is the main reason of disturbance for the archaeology; (2) there are technical restrictions showing that metal detectors cannot reach below 40 cm under the ground, and therefore, they bear no threat to the archaeology below subsoil layers; (3) having a metal-detected find excavated and recorded is a lot better than not having it at all. Although I do not necessarily disagree with these points, which might be valid under specific circumstances, there are three counter-points that make me feel sceptical of metal-detecting: (1) in praxis, metal detectorists can go after visible features that have never been ploughed, such as shallow burial mounds or graves located closer to the modern surface, and destroy them; (2) the scanning depth of metal detectors is not standard; it depends on the manufacture of the device measured against the chemical composition and compaction of the soil; furthermore, what is defined as topsoil and subsoil is extremely subjective, particularly to someone who is used to seeing 4th century BC graves dug 10 cm below the tarmac of a modern Athenian street; and (3) there would have been a lot more useful information other than the sole object extracted out of the ground, had the context been properly excavated.
The main reason, which puts me against metal detecting, however, has to do with the ownership of the finds. Regardless whether a metal-detected find has been declared or not, the object can easily be sold or transferred across the hands of different owners. This way, it can (and will) become invisible and inaccessible to any scholar who wishes to study it. In cases when metal detectorists decide not to declare their objects, which is technically illegal, the finds are totally invisible as if they were never dug out of the ground. To me, the value of metal-detected objects is the same as the value of looted archaeological artefacts: they can only be appreciated as traded commodities or fetishised objects.
Finally, I would like to present a real story, which shows the conflicting interests of private individuals in relation to the ownership of archaeological finds in Britain. The names of the people and the places of the events have been altered to protect the reputation of the parties involved in the story.
“During a conference that I attended some time ago in London, which discussed some recent archaeological finds from the island of Crete in Greece, I happened to sit next to Mr. Bee, a friendly gentleman who introduced himself to me as an amateur archaeologist and metal detectorist. While chatting with him during the coffee break, Mr. Bee felt curious to know if metal detecting was a legal practice in Greece, and how rewarding such activity might be. Personally, I found his question highly insulting; however, I tried to stay calm and explained him that doing something like that in Greece was against the law. In fact, the possession and trade of illicit antiquities is still regarded a serious felony. Had he been caught carrying archaeological finds that were illegally acquired, he would have been facing up to ten years imprisonment. I also explained him that Greek laws are relatively mild, as I know countries where the penalty for such felonies is death. I somehow felt happy when I saw Mr. Bee's facial expressions changing. All of a sudden he became paler and stopped the conversation. I am not entirely sure what his plans were, but if he intended taking up metal detecting abroad, my piece of advice probably saved him from a lot of trouble.
During another public talk in London, which presented the latest archaeological finds from various sites across Southern Britain, I found myself talking to Mr. Ash, the landlord of a large cultivated plot, which produced various metal artefacts and was considered important enough to be excavated. Mr. Ash had serious problems in the past with metal detectorists, who continuously trespassed to his land at night and dug out of the ploughed soil precious metal artefacts, such as golden coins and silver pins. Mr. Ash installed cameras and even notified the police in few occasions, but without any success. The problem was partly resolved a couple of years later, when he secured state funding and hired an archaeological unit to survey the land and run systematic metal detecting. Despite that the funding was from a public body, which probably expected the finds to be donated to a museum, Mr. Ash decided to play his legal cards right: he first declared the finds and then kept them for himself in complete disappointment of the archaeologists. Full of pride for his gold, he started wondering from lecture theatres to public libraries in order to discuss his precious artefacts with knowledgeable experts. When I met him, he was telling me that further ploughing of his land was still producing new finds and he needed to secure new funding to conduct proper excavations. His fear was that if he did not secure excavation funding as fast as possible, the night hawks would have started raiding his land with their metal detectors, without him being able to stop them. Although I sympathised with Mr. Ash, his story was completely alien to my ears. I decided to move away from this group of people and helped myself with some coffee. Half an hour later on my was back in the room, I saw Mr. Ash chatting about his ideas to an old acquaintance of mine from the past: it was Mr. Bee, who was listening carefully to the information, costing the artefacts in Mr. Ash's hands with the tips of his eyes, and planning his next raid carefully at the back of his head”. Life can be so funny sometimes!
Owning archaeological material in Greece
In Greek archaeology, the ownership of archaeological artefacts and the ownership of the legal rights to any intellectual property deriving from them are treated as two separate things. This means that even if one can access primary archaeological sources and study them, it is not entirely certain that his/her study can be used. In my opinion, the Greek system is probably one of the most complicated ever generated by the finest of all bureaucracies. Furthermore, talking from my personal experience, it operates in a manner that is completely surreal. Although there seems be some sort of legislation on the subject, which has been put down in official language yet in blurry words, the 'office holders' and their 'initiates' can easily find cracks through the system (often referred to as 'the little windows'), and manipulate the original legislation at will and under controlled circumstances. In general, any access to archaeological artefacts depends on two parameters: who is asking, and why?
Theoretically, all archaeological artefacts belong to the state, which legislates to make sure that they remain the intellectual property and the cultural heritage of the Greek people; in reality, however, almost no Greek person is allowed to access such artefacts. Even when archaeological finds are exhibited in museums, visitors are often not allowed to photograph them, particularly when these are unpublished. The usual excuse to prevent people from taking photographs is that flash lights damage the surfaces of some artefacts; however, if a visitor asks the security staff to take a photograph without using a flash light, the answer will still be no. The problem is not the flash light but the picture: although an unpublished artefact is allowed to see the light of publicity, it is definitely not allowed to see light of any recording device until it is published. The person responsible for the publication of such material is the excavator, and even if the excavator is well retired or dead, publication needs to wait until a suitable heir is found to publish the material. Strangely, the heir is not being appointed by the state, which owns the material, but from the actual excavator.
To demonstrate the absurdity of this system, I am planning to present two short stories taken from my personal experiences at Greek museums. In the first story, when I was a high-school student in the 1980s, I remember visiting the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus at the foot of the Athenian Acropolis. Among the things that astonished me was the Hellenistic statue of satyr, which was exhibited at an open area with sculptures close to the actual theatre. In 2011, during a friend's visit in Athens, I had another chance to visit the theatre, and I felt twice astonished when I realised that the satyr's statue was still there. Full of interest, I decided to take a picture of it, but then I was interrupted by one of the security staff, who reminded me that visitors were not allowed to photograph any of the statues. As it was 3pm on a sunny September afternoon, I doubt that the problem was my camera's flash light, which I was not planning to use anyway. What bothered the security staff was probably that the statues were still unpublished, even though more than twenty years had gone by since the first time they were put in display. In the second story, during a visit of mine at the museum of Herakleion in Crete in October 2017, I had to speak up to some security staff who were shouting at the tourists not to take photographs of specific artefacts. To be fair, these artefacts had an elaborate sign next to them explaining that they were unpublished, and so visitors were not allowed to photograph them. Still, the logic behind this strategy made absolutely no sense to me: if these artefacts were not to be photographed, then why did these guys put them in display in the first place? When I asked this question to the museum staff, I saw the employees starring at me silently without any answer. It was definitely not their fault as they were only following instructions from above, which were meant to protect the rights of the excavators over the finds. The point I am trying to make here is that, if taking a simple picture of an artefact is such a huge issue in Greek Archaeology, then imagine the difficulty of accessing the actual artefact in physical form.
An evident question is why an excavator has property rights over a material, which by law belongs to the state. The answer is very simple: the excavator IS the state. In Greece there is no such thing as commercial archaeology. Archaeology is done by state bodies or universities, which also belong to the state. Occasionally, foreign schools and foreign universities are allowed to conduct excavations, but again, these are approved and monitored by government officials (1).
The main authorities regulating and supervising archaeological excavations are called Ephorates and they are divided by prefectures. The prefecture archaeologist (or Ephor) responsible for the supervision of an excavation is the legal excavator, even if this is not the actual person digging. The actual 'digger' is again chosen by the state, but other than doing the 'digging', this person has no rights over the dig. The hiring process is equally surreal as everything else: the Ephorate announces a job description through the government's media, which is just an old fashion newspaper; it invites private archaeologists to apply for jobs by submitting a tonne of paperwork, including documents proving that the applicant is human and not elephant; it chooses the 'right' archaeologist based on a point system defined by specific and very restricted criteria (2); and finally, forces the contractor to hire and pay for the archaeologist they chose in order to conduct the dig. Of course, the word 'digger' in the Greek archaeological vocabulary is translated as the trained archaeologist who acts as a trench or site supervisor, while the actual digging is done by non-trained workers (3). The final word for the excavation, however, and the publication of any archaeological material belongs to the Ephor, who might never show up at the site.
If an excavation is conducted by a university or a foreign institution, the situation is slightly different. There is definitely an Ephor monitoring the dig; however, the excavator is the senior coordinator of the site, who is usually a lecturer or professor. The Ephor and the academic member of staff have equal authority over the site; therefore, any decision on the artefacts and the publication of excavation reports needs to include the agreement of both parties. As the artefacts belong to the state, the Ephor makes sure that these are transported to warehouses and are stored for future study. Who will be allowed to study these, however, is a complicated matter involving various dynamics.
Usually, the most favourable candidates who are likely to access and study the material are the ones who have already participated in the excavation, plus, any staff from the local Ephorate of Antiquities. Access tends to be very limited to people other that those. The reason is because public access to the material (if there is such thing) is granted only after the material has been published.
If a third party scholar wishes to study some published material at a second stage, this person must apply for a permit to both the Ephorate and the excavators. Access is granted depending on a list of terms and conditions. The most usual term is that the researcher should submit a copy of his/her work to both parties. Secondly, the re-publication of already published information requires another permit to be granted, this time by the excavator, the Ephor and the original publisher. If the researcher wishes to take pictures or draw any of the artefacts, then another permit is required. And even worse, if the researcher needs to sample any of the finds, then the application needs to be granted by the supreme board of antiquities and the excavators. This board includes the archaeologists' committee, the government’s scientific committee, and the conservators' committee. Needless to say that if any of these parties rejects the application, then the project needs to stop.
This strict system may have a good reason to be in place; however, the processes are very slow and they tend to focus on the wrong issues. For instance, even not stated from the beginning, such committees are there to make sure that nobody's intellectual property is stolen. Furthermore, the excuse that such committees make sure artefacts are not damaged by researchers, makes absolutely no sense. The reason is simple: how many excavated finds are actually collected and stored? When I was a university student, I was taught that during Greek excavations finds are so many, that there are at least three cubic meters of pottery thrown away every hour of excavation. What is kept for future reference is usually decorated pottery and/or artistic objects in general (statuettes, decorative marble, bronzes, votive artefacts, inscriptions, etc.). This selection will, of course, bias the archaeological record sometime in the future. It is interesting that most archaeology students in Greece think that 5th century BC Athenian pottery was always decorated; the reason they think of this is because most of the coarse wares have been thrown away. As part of Schliemann's legacy, modern Greek Classical archaeology has two types of artefacts to deal with: 'garbage' and 'art'. And even if there are strict restrictions is accessing and studying art, why do these restrictions need to apply to 'garbage'? For some unexplainable reason, the Greek authorities prefer artefacts to be thrown away instead of allowing researchers to study them. In my opinion, the only logic behind this is that there can only be a limited number of people that can be 'famous'.
So what happens if an Ephor or excavator goes to pension or passes away before managing to publish any of the excavated art? A few years ago I attended a lecture by a retired Greek professor, who presented some archaeological finds from one of the Greek islands. After the talk, several researchers approached the professor to ask if there is any potential for this material to be studied further. The professor was unusually inviting to everybody, a fact that I considered as a side-effect of the free wine. That night I remember her saying to me: “You young scholars need to go there and start studying the material. Of course, there is no funding to do that; but you must go and study the material before I die, because if I do, then my nieces are going to inherit the material and they will not even bother with it”. This statement was shocking. It proved to me that intellectual property rights in Greek archaeology not only belong to the excavator who represents the state, but they can be inherited by the excavators' heirs, even if they have absolutely nothing to do with archaeology!
Presuming thought that everybody is alive and kicking, then what is the procedure for accessing and studying archaeological artefacts in Greece, without of course violating the intellectual property rights of other parties? Again, my answer comes from personal experience: there needs to be a long process of applications to the local authorities and the applicant needs to consider the conflicting interests of various parties. In principle, any permit needs to be granted by the state, which is represented by the local Ephorate of Antiquities; however, before applying to them, the excavator needs to be consulted to approve what material needs to be accessed and studied. It is fair that any unpublished material is to be avoided as the excavator might decide to publish it sometime in the future. Often, the material might remain unpublished for years, while there are occasions where the excavator dies and the material passes on to people with no archaeological training.
If the material is already published, then the excavator has no apparent reason to refuse access in order for the artefacts to be re-studied, unless several other people have been asking to see the same material. Again, the excavator has every right not to agree and does not need to present any explanations to anybody. Further problems may arise in relation to the production of new intellectual properties out of the same original material, and the re-publication of what has already been published. For example, if the researcher wishes to produce a picture of a specific artefact, then this requires the agreement of both the excavator and the Ephorate after a written application. If the researcher wished to re-publish a photograph of a specific artefact coming from a book, then the publisher and the person who originally took that picture need to be asked.
After the excavator agrees that there is no problem for the researcher to gain access to the published material and also photograph or draw it, the applicant needs to fill in a second application to the local Ephorate and wait for an answer. The answer is likely to take a long time, but usually this does not take more than a year. As explained earlier, things can become more complicated if some of the material needs to be sampled. In that case, there needs to be another permit application, which will be discussed by three different boards within the Ephotae, and is likely to take a lot more than just a year, if it is ever granted. If a plain 'accessing, studying, illustrating, photographing and publishing' permit is granted (please note that every act is mentioned as a separate event), the researcher needs to contact the facility where the material is stored and gain physical access to it. This is another Odyssey in it own merit.
Although one face of the state, which is the Ephorate, might agree to grant access, the other face of the state, which is the museum or the local antiquities depository, might decide to refuse access, at least for a certain period of time. Some of the most common reasons for long delays are the reduced numbers of staff caused by annual leaves, pregnancy leaves and redundancies; the transferring of the artefacts to temporary exhibitions abroad; the lack of appropriate studying space; the absence of security staff who hold the keys to various buildings and who only happen to work part time; the refurbishment and renovation of the facilities, which are shut down for ages; and the fact that researchers and members of the public are only allowed access during specific days, and only for a limited number of hours per week. In reality, the researcher may never be able to gain access to the material, and even if he/she does, long delays are likely to bankrupt the researcher's project before it even finishes. Finally, if the researcher is lucky enough to finish the study on time and publish the results, the authorities oblige the researcher to submit a copy of his/her work to every body that granted any type of permit during the project.
Conclusion
In the last section, I demonstrated that for countries with strict access restrictions to archaeological artefacts, such as Greece, research is limited to those few privileged and to those with unlimited resources and patience. Any production of new archaeological work requires the recognition of the parties that are the legal owners of the original archaeological material, and therefore, the owners of any intellectual property deriving from it. In some cases, new archaeological research cannot be produced unless the author agrees to publish it jointly under his/her name and the name of the excavator or the person who gave permission for the material to be accessed. Without their agreement, the study cannot progress. What is truly surreal, however, is that the owners of the archaeological artefacts are just different faces of the same mechanism, which is the state. Often, such people operate as units and not a parts of the same mechanism, and are likely to generate different problems during different phases of an archaeological project, resulting to its termination.
What if an archaeological research project is never published ?
The scenario that an archaeologist's work or personal research might be published in the future, for many colleagues of mine sounds like a disappointing joke. Many of us that have managed to put together a PhD thesis are aware that very little is likely to be published at the end, if any at all. Despite that every university-based researcher can claim the paternity of his/her ideas, the final product does not belong to the researcher. Academic institutions force the researchers to sign their work off to the university, so that it can be uploaded for free on a thesis database under the institution's name. In my opinion this is probably the best way for researchers to see their work publicly available; what I disagree with, however, is that the whole process does not allow them the opportunity to say no if they have different plans for their work. If a researcher decides not to sign over the rights of his/her work to the university, then the latter may refuse his/her title and graduation. To be fair, institutions tend to give the researchers the opportunity to put a bar-on access to the content of their work, which is only valid for a year, and in exceptional cases, it might be renewed up to two years. Given that a single five-page article in Classical Archaeology could take up to six years to be published, a single-year bar-on access for a monograph is completely pointless.
The other problem is that institutions treat archaeological theses as full-style publications, although when these are uploaded on an institution's database, they do not count as 'proper' publications. In my opinion, if a PhD thesis has been reviewed and proof-read by the examiners, and if the thesis has the approval of an institution, this thesis has every right be a real publication and not a large-sized academic exercise.
While treating a thesis as a full-style publication (at least in theory), universities are putting huge pressure on researchers to make sure that they have the approval of all parties when using material that has been reserved and protected under creative commons legislation. This means that for every picture or graph or chart included in a thesis, the researcher needs to track the owner of this intellectual property, and apply to each one separately for approval. If one of these parties decides that their intellectual property should not be re-published, then the researcher needs to take it out of his/her thesis. It is a lot easier if the thesis does not include any such material from the beginning; however, there are occasions when theses' supervisors and examiners demand the inclusion of such figures in the final volume. The only solution for a researcher is to enrich his/her text with such figures in order to please the people assessing his/her work, and when the time comes for the thesis to be uploaded on the internet, to either apply for permits or to black everything that has been reserved and protected under creative commons legislation.
Both strategies have advantages and disadvantages; however, the easiest and most common one is the latter. Researchers will probably black a lot of images included in their theses and the final text will (of course) make no sense to the people reading it. Having 'black' fields in a piece of archaeological work is not only anti-aesthetic, but is also affects the coherence of the text and the reader's understanding. The alternative solution is to go through a long and stressful process of applying and receiving re-publication permits, which is problematic in its own right.
First of all, the most stressful problem is not finding the publisher who has printed a photo or a graph or a chart in a book, but tracing the very first original publisher, and the very first person who produced that specific item. Things become more complicated if the publisher does not exist any more, or the person who originally produced the item has departed. In such cases, the researcher needs to conduct a lot more research to figure out who inherited the intellectual property rights for this specific material. Doing this on top of everything else that has been researched along many years of work will definitely put people off.
Another surreal case is when the intellectual property rights of an item have been reserved in a country, the legislation of which demands eternal recognition of the original owners. These can be the authors and the publishers, or even the funding bodies which sponsored specific studies in the past. For example, there are archaeological reports dating back in the 1920s, containing illustrated material, which cannot be reproduced without the permission of the institution that financed that specific study 100 years ago, even though the publishing company is now shut and the original author and his heirs are all dead. To grant such permit, the funding body may decide that a certain amount of money needs to be paid annually as a royalty fee. The fee may not be huge; however, any extra cost on top of what a self-funded researcher has spent along the years is already too much, particularly when the whole project was put together for the sake of knowledge.
Conclusion
The point that I am trying to make here is that even if an academic piece of work is not intended to be commercially reproduced, the person owning this piece of work has absolutely no control over it. Academic institutions can decide against an archaeologist's will regarding how his/her work will be publicly available. Furthermore, they can enforce that the intellectual property rights of all parties are satisfied by the researcher, even if this means that he/she has to pay money out of his/her own pocket to do that. Even if the research is funded by a funding body, it is doubtful that the funding body will be willing to cover annual royalties to third parties for as long as a thesis exists.
Personally, I not only find the attitude of institutions dictatorial, but also hypocritical and extremely annoying. If universities wish to act as real publishers by using other people's work, they firstly need to contact and satisfy all third parties involved in a thesis themselves, and secondly, they need to have a written agreement with the researchers, protecting their work after this is uploaded online. None of these two is actually happening. Finally, universities tend to be very relaxed with intellectual property rights when it comes to academic assignments, such as undergraduate or masters dissertations. This is probably because such pieces of work will never see the light of publicity; therefore, there is no need for the students to contact any third parties to satisfy their intellectual property demands. If universities wish to be fair, they need to allow doctoral candidates to decide if and how they wish to make their own work publicly available.
What if an archaeological research project is actually published ?
As stated at the beginning of this article, if an archaeological project is published, then the intellectual property rights of the publication belong to the publisher, and to some lesser extent, to the actual author. In my opinion, this situation is not necessarily putting the author in a disadvantageous position, as in most cases it is the publisher utilising the technological and financial resources for a volume to be produced; therefore, the publisher needs to have control over the actual publication. The problem that I see behind the publication of archaeological work, however, is the price of the final product, which is in most cases extraordinary expensive.
When I was an undergraduate student at the Open University, I used to work full time until very late in the afternoons; therefore, I had limited time to visit the libraries to work on my assignments and needed to buy most of the books. Needless to say that online resources and weekend libraries were (and probably still are) two totally unknown concepts in the Greek education system. During the final year of my studies, I was convinced to buy the notorious volume 'Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice' by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, which circulated in Greek translation. The price was shocking. I remember spending 9% of an entire month's salary just for buying a book. Despite that this volume was by far one of the most interesting pieces of work I had ever read in my life until that time, it was so expensive that it messed my budget for an entire month. Ever since, I have purchased a number of academic books, and the norm is always the same: the cheapest soft copies range between £20 and £40, while rarer hard copies can reach up to £250, or even higher. In general, such books are so overpriced that it is almost impossible for a private individual to build up a decent collection without spending a fortune. It is also scary that academic books are priced in such ways, that only parties with substantial budgets can afford them (e.g. public libraries, universities, research institutions, museums, etc.).
The cost of academic publications excludes a large number of scholars from purchasing them. On this point, one could argue that scholars can always access such publications at libraries for free, which is true; however, this only works for full time researchers, who have the luxury of spending an entire day in the library. For researchers who are earning their living in sectors that are non library related, the only way of accessing and reading books during their free time is by buying physical copies. If books are too expensive for them to buy, it is obvious that their research will be lacking adequate resources.
A good question to discuss is what makes academic books so expensive. The most common answer to this relates to the technical means that are required for producing an academic volume, such as the prices of paper and ink, the cost of editing, illustrating and designing a book, the salaries and the running costs of printing facilities, etc. In reality, however, this is not true. If one compares the price of a physical and a digital copy of the same book online, then this person will obviously see that the price of the physical copy is only a couple of pounds cheaper than the digital version. This suggests that the cost of the material means utilised for producing a physical copy only represent a small fraction of the copy's price, and in most cases this does not even exceed £2 including the publisher's profit. So, if this is the case, what is it that makes academic books so expensive? In my opinion, there are only two possible explanations: either the authors and the publishers are too greedy, or there are additional costs associated with the copyright licensing of academic work, which add up to the final cost of books.
Without excluding the first possibility, I would like to focus more on copyrights and intellectual property restrictions, which appear to be the main players responsible for having expensive academic books nowadays, especially in archaeology. As explained above, access to primary resources is limited by creative commons restrictions, and if royalties need to be paid to different parties before putting together a research publication, then the author and the publisher will move that cost to the final consumer. It is highly likely that the absence of such intellectual property and copyright-related costs would have made academic books a lot cheaper. Again, one must not forget that such restrictions were put there in the first place by the excavators and/or other authors in order to protect their rights over the archaeological material used to produce their own books. Furthermore, copyright restrictions were also initiated to guarantee a profit for publishers once their volumes were out in the market. So, what do all these mean? That apparently the cost of intellectual property and copyrights in the publishing industry is again connected with the greed of the authors and the publishers.
In the second part of this article series on creative commons restrictions in the commercial arts (Part 2), I pointed out the similarity between academic publications and other forms of literature. Furthermore, I pointed out that in commercial literature, copyright restrictions are only there to regulate the relationship between publishers and authors. The main problem in academic publications, however, is that the cost of regulating such relationships is huge and falls heavily on the backs of the consumers. Even though in commercial literature there is absolutely no need for the circulation of illegal copies among the public, the absurd cost of academic books has already generated a demand for cheaper illegal reproductions among scholars and researchers. Just like in music and cinema, modern technology offers the means for them to generate such reproductions. It is not uncommon among researchers, particularly students, to photocopy large and expensive volumes at a relatively low cost. Furthermore, modern digital cameras have settings for 'scanning' books and there is free software to convert such scans into digital volumes. Digital versions of books can be easily shared among many readers, and occasionally, authors of academic articles post their work for free on their websites or other academic social media.
Same as with the popular commercial arts, the circulation of unauthorised copies in the arts and the humanities is linked to the price of the final products. The more expensive a piece of work, the more the probabilities to be copied and shared illegally for free. Unlike commercial literature, however, academic books are used as intellectual tools, which are not only read in one go for pleasure, but are constantly revisited and referenced every time a new piece of academic work needs to be produced. Modern technologies allow scholars and researchers to 'copy' such books from libraries and then use them whenever necessary. Publishers and authors cannot do anything about this. Not only the copying procedure cannot be monitored and prevented, but along the years there has been an established tradition allowing book-copying to take place for the enhancement of knowledge.
The solution to the creative commons problem
What I am about to suggest here, is a radical solution that is meant to eliminate any problems caused by bureaucracy and legal complications in relation to creative commons restrictions and intellectual property rights. As we live in the age of technology, where the internet reproduces information fast and to a wide audience, there is absolutely no reason for controlling the circulation of such information. As demonstrated in the section on the commercial arts, the system is already adapting by realising how pointless such efforts are. The same principles need to be followed in the arts and the humanities.
In my opinion, there is absolutely no point in having such restrictive laws, which are only there to enforce prevention and exclusion. Finding legal obstacles for restricting any access, study and reproduction of archaeological resources is not helping anybody and it only makes the promotion of knowledge impossible. Furthermore, it establishes intellectual elites with protected rights over specific archaeological assemblages, who manipulate their study and control any information that could be produced out of them.
For the above reasons, the solution is very simple: once archaeology has been dug out of the ground, it belongs to everybody who wishes to study it and has the proper training to do so. Instead of focusing in protecting the rights of an established archaeological elite, the system needs to act in favour of promoting new archaeological knowledge.
To do so, it is important for countries to promote a legislation that supports private initiatives in archaeological research and minimises any complications created by bureaucracy. Firstly, intellectual property rights over archaeological materials need to be restricted to a maximum of three years after the completion of any excavation. Secondly, the legal ownership of archaeological materials needs to be limited to one party only, and most preferably to the local governments. Thirdly, the duration of copyright restrictions for academic books needs to be limited between three to five years, and only for their commercial exploitation. Fourthly, the currently established academic system needs to accept that online publications have the same validity as conventional publications. By doing so, the circulation of academic work though online media will expand more rapidly and so will the promotion of scientific knowledge. Finally, for countries with strict legislation and complicated restrictions such as Greece, the system needs to be totally revised in order to allow more access and freedom of movement to independent researchers. Scary as it will sound to many of my Greek colleagues, I strongly believe that archaeology in Greece must be privatised as soon as possible.
Notes
- The only exception to this rule is some foreign archaeological schools, which established their rights in Greek archaeology almost over a century ago. When Greek archaeology was in its juvenile state, many countries that were regarded as great colonial, political, economic and military powers of their time, managed to strike deals with the newly-born Greek state, which allowed their archaeological schools full access to (if not control over) specific archaeological sites and their finds. Nowadays, accessing archaeological material belonging to such schools in Greece is subject to the laws and regulations of the countries these institutions are based in, although technically, the applicant still needs to apply for a second permit to the Greek authorities.
- The author of the article is not recognised by the Greek state as a professional archaeologist. The reasons will be gladly explained in a different article.
- It is an interesting question why universities continue producing archaeologists in Greece, particularly if they are never meant to dig. The problem, of course, is complicated and encountered across many other countries in Europe. The archaeological profession is connected with land development and there is generally great demand for archaeologists in the European market; however, most of the archaeologists graduating from universities are either unemployed or prefer careers in other industries. This problem requires further discussion and it will be the topic of a different article.