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 distinct nature of copyright restrictions in the arts and humanities requires a basic understanding of the general situation with Creative Commons licenses in the commercial arts. This is why I attempted to discuss the commercial arts in the previous article under Part 2. My approach is that if Creative Commons restrictions are gradually abandoned in commercial disciplines, there is absolutely no reason for them to be stricter in disciplines that make little or no profit, particularly when such disciplines claim to promote knowledge. A discipline with such an attitude in the arts and the humanities is archaeology, which will be the main focus of this article.
The situation regarding copyright and intellectual property restrictions for the protection of archaeological work is far worse than any of the cases discussed for the commercial arts. Not only are every little thing included in a scientific book or periodical subject to Creative Commons restrictions (e.g. text, photographs, charts, graphs, drawings, etc.), but Creative Commons rights seem to extend even beyond the lifetime of the person writing or the lifetime of the company publishing. Furthermore, on many occasions, the original material used to support an intellectual argument is automatically subject to the same restrictions as the actual study that follows. The system is so strict that it makes everyone wonder whether archaeological work aims to promote scientific knowledge. With such restrictions, the ‘promotion’ of knowledge is limited unless it takes place in a controlled environment and under controlled conditions (e.g., in a university for the purposes of written assignments). And is this controlled environment ideal for the circulation of new ideas, or is it just considered ideal because it is the only one available?
Many people in academia would argue that the above case does not hold in every field in the arts and humanities, and that everything I am writing in this article is the result of a personal bad experience in 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 available 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 plan to discuss the process as a series of steps that include legally established obstacles to be considered whenever a new idea is put down on paper. My aim is to demonstrate that the energy wasted in satisfying the demands of this absurd intellectual property mechanism is enough to put people off and 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 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 is 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 greater the chance the archaeologist will be eaten alive; the less complex the Labyrinth, the greater the chance the archaeologist will 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 staring towards the unknown. The archaeologist resembles Christopher Columbus, standing on the Atlantic’s shore and staring at the mast of a sailing ship as it sinks 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 sitting there thinking between the plausible and the unknown, and everything begins with an idea.
Who owns the original idea?
In archaeology, any new idea results from intellectual stimulation, which motivates the scholar to produce a text that reflects the reasoning behind that 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 development 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 also demand to be cited alongside the person who originally thought of 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 more established researchers to see if it makes sense. Secondly, if the archaeologist is a university-based researcher, he/she needs to find a senior staff member to serve as a coach for the project. Thirdly, the idea needs to be practically tested on some sort of archaeological material, which can be accessed at an archaeological dig, a warehouse, a museum, or a library if published. Access to such material requires more people to decide 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 may also be forced to sell the paternity of his/her idea in exchange for help. Legally speaking, there is no law that can guarantee the idea belongs to the person who originally had it. It all comes down to the honesty of the people who will interact with the project.
Furthermore, many scholars feel that, upon completion of their project, the final product of their intellectual work should become a commercial product if a potential publisher agrees to publish it. Archaeology is not intended to target a large consumer audience, but rather an audience 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; the archaeologist does as well, although not always in the financial sense: the scholar is likely to gain extra points on his/her publication record, which can be cashed in 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 archaeologist's work will be passed on to the publisher, even though the archaeologist will still claim the paternity of his/her original idea. The situation will worsen if the publisher’s reviewers decide that the original idea needs modifications to meet the commercial requirements of a larger audience. If the final product changes, the scholar will still claim paternity of their 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 who 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 professional, the system has flaws that allow them to turn against the archaeologist and become manipulative. The fact that no mechanism exists to protect such original ideas, unlike in the commercial arts, only enhances bullying and the 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 to 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 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 individual or larger bodies, which complicates things further. The legal ‘ownership’ of an archaeological material might vary under certain 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 will be successful. It is more than possible that the ‘owners’ of the material might decide not to grant a 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 must be put in place to find new material. As a result, in many cases, it is not the archaeologist who decides his/her research questions and strategies, but the nature of the material he/she can access. The archaeologist cannot examine what is ideal for a specific study but must compromise with whatever is available, even if that material is not suitable for producing the right information. In simple terms, one cannot get what he/she wants; one must settle for whatever is available.
The legislation for the ‘ownership’ of archaeological artefacts varies from country to country. On the one hand, there are countries with lenient laws that allow private individuals or companies to own such material. On the other hand, there are countries with strict, often harsh laws that allow only state bodies to own archaeological artefacts, with the whole system regulated by a single central authority. The fairest of all norms, however, is a combination of both systems, in which state and private parties possess ownership rights under the supervision of a government-based authority.
What is fascinating and annoying at the same time is how the laws of some countries define the ‘ownership’ of archaeological artefacts. The reason I use quotation marks is that in real life, the ownership of any object relates to the actual object only. To give you an extended example, the mug I use at work to drink coffee in the mornings is a nicely decorated purple mug with white flowers, one among thousands of identical mugs industrially produced by a certain pottery factory. I know this specific mug is mine because I bought it. The reason other people at work know this mug is mine is that 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 me, the furniture belongs to the company. Whatever the case, if a third party decides to take a picture of my mug standing on my desk and post it on social media, this person does not need the company’s or my permission to do so.
The situation might be different if an object is personalised. If someone decided to take a picture of my car and post it on social media, I would have expected that person to contact me and ask my permission. The reason is that, although my car is one among many identical cars produced by the same factory in the same red colour, its number plate is not. Since anybody can track my name through the number plate, I would have found it reasonable to be contacted by the person taking the picture, or if I was not reached, I would have expected that person to black out the number plate 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 in my car, my license plate and my face will be on that video, along 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 in an open public space cannot be considered a threat to a person’s privacy. Despite what the law says, I know a lot of people who 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 number plate was recorded in the background of a porn film at one of the Greek islands in the late 1990s.
The reason I brought up all these examples was to demonstrate that taking a picture of an ordinary modern object, even if highly personalised, does not require consideration of legal complications. By contrast, taking a picture of an archaeological artefact is by far legally overcomplicated. The reason is that 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 from it. Theoretically, this understanding of archaeological artefacts seems fair; in practice, however, it only leads to extremely surreal situations. As this will be my favourite part of the article, I plan to present real examples from the British and Greek cases of artefact ‘ownership’.
Owning archaeological material in Britain
In Britain, laws favour landowners, 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 local governments recognise that any archaeology hidden beneath any plot of private or public land has public interest or national importance. The people who 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 archaeological investigations before applying any significant modifications to the land, and to ensure that any archaeology beneath 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 are monitored by government bodies and also comply with 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 safely stored to be accessed at any time in the future. The archiving and deposition of such artefacts vary under different circumstances, and no further emphasis will be given to 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 in some sort of warehouse, the ownership of which is jointly held by the archaeological unit that excavated them and the public body responsible for heritage management in that specific region (e.g., a museum, a 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 of people who wish to study archaeological materials. Of course, the excavators need to agree with that too. The reason is that 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 arranging the technical details for accessing archaeological material. This requires finding a convenient time to visit the storage facilities, finding some free space to work, and doing so in a way that causes minimal disturbance to others working in the same environment.
British law also allows private individuals to dig up the ground and keep small archaeological artefacts at will, provided they are declared to and recorded by the state and 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. Under British law, there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone buying a metal detector and digging for finds. The only legal restriction is that this must be carried out on public land; if a metal-detected find is dug up on private land, the legal owner of the find is the landlord, 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 I oppose metal detecting, however, is the ownership of the finds. Regardless of whether a metal-detected find has been declared, the object can be easily sold or transferred between owners. This way, it can (and will) become invisible and inaccessible to any scholar who wishes to study it. When metal detectorists decide not to declare their objects, which is technically illegal, the finds are completely 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 that illustrates the conflicting interests of private individuals regarding the ownership of archaeological finds in Britain. The names of the people and places in the events have been altered to protect the reputations 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 was curious about whether metal detecting was legal in Greece and how rewarding it might be. Personally, I found his question highly insulting; however, I tried to stay calm and explained to him that doing something like that in Greece was illegal. In fact, the possession and trade of illicit antiquities are still regarded as serious felonies. Had he been caught carrying illegally acquired archaeological finds, he would have faced up to ten years' imprisonment. I also explained to 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 to take 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 repeatedly trespassed on his land at night and dug up precious metal artefacts from the ploughed soil, such as golden coins and silver pins. Mr Ash installed cameras and even notified the police on a 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 the funding being 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, then kept them for himself, leaving the archaeologists completely disappointed. Full of pride in his gold, he began wandering from lecture theatres to public libraries to discuss his precious artefacts with knowledgeable experts. When I met him, he told me that further ploughing of his land was still producing new finds, and that 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 start 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, I was back in the room, and 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, casting 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 legal rights to any intellectual property derived from them are treated as separate matters. 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, from my personal experience, it operates in a completely surreal manner. Although there seems to 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 ensure they remain the intellectual property and cultural heritage of the Greek people; in reality, however, almost no Greek person is allowed to access them. Even when archaeological finds are exhibited in museums, visitors are often not allowed to photograph them, particularly when these are unpublished. The usual excuse for preventing people from taking photographs is that flashlights damage the surfaces of some artefacts; however, if a visitor asks security staff to take a photograph without using a flashlight, the answer will still be no. The problem is not the flashlight but the picture: although an unpublished artefact is allowed to see the light of publicity, it is definitely not allowed to see the light of any recording device until it is published. The person responsible for publishing such material is the excavator, and even if the excavator is well retired or dead, publication must wait until a suitable heir is found to publish it. Strangely, the heir is not being appointed by the state, which owns the material, but by the actual excavator.
To demonstrate the absurdity of this system, I plan to present two short stories drawn 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 a satyr, which was displayed in an open area with sculptures near the actual theatre. In 2011, during a friend’s visit to 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 I was interrupted by a security staff member, 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 the problem was my camera’s flash, which I wasn't planning to use anyway. What bothered the security staff was probably that the statues were still unpublished, even though more than 20 years had passed since they were first put on display. In the second story, during a visit to the Herakleion Museum in Crete in October 2017, I had to speak up to security staff who were shouting at tourists not to photograph 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 on display in the first place? When I asked this question to the museum staff, I saw the employees staring at me silently, without answering. It was definitely not their fault, as they were only following instructions from above intended to protect the excavators' rights 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.
A clear question is why an excavator has property rights over a material that, 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 conducted by state bodies or universities that are also part of 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, which are divided by prefecture. The prefecture archaeologist (or Ephor) responsible for supervising an excavation is the legal excavator, even if the actual person digging is not. 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 Greek archaeological vocabulary refers to a trained archaeologist who acts as a trench or site supervisor, while the actual digging is done by untrained 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 site's senior coordinator, 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 ensures they are transported to warehouses and stored for future study. Who will be allowed to study these, however, is a complicated matter involving various dynamics.
Usually, the most favourable candidates, likely to access and study the material, are those who have already participated in the excavation, as well as any staff from the local Ephorate of Antiquities. Access tends to be very limited to people other than those. The reason is that public access to the material (if there is such a 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 usual practice is for the researcher to submit a copy of his/her work to both parties. Secondly, the republication of previously published information requires a new permit, 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, the application must 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, if any of these parties reject the application, the project must 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 though it wasn't stated from the beginning, such committees are there to ensure that no one’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, so many finds were made that at least 3 cubic meters of pottery were discarded 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, because most coarse wares have been discarded. 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 on accessing and studying art, why do these restrictions need to apply to ‘garbage’? For some inexplicable reason, the Greek authorities prefer that artefacts be thrown away rather than allowing researchers to study them. In my opinion, the only logic behind this is that there can only be a limited number of people who can be ‘famous’.
So what happens if an Ephor or excavator retires or passes away before publishing 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 was any potential for this material to be studied further. The professor was unusually welcoming to everyone, a fact I attributed to 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 can also be inherited by the excavator's heirs, even if they have absolutely nothing to do with archaeology!
Presuming 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 is a lengthy process of applying to local authorities, and the applicant needs to consider the conflicting interests of various parties. In principle, any permit must be granted by the state, represented by the local Ephorate of Antiquities; however, before applying to them, the excavator must consult with them to determine which material needs to be accessed and studied. It is fair to avoid any unpublished material, as the excavator may decide to publish it later. Often, the material may remain unpublished for years, while on other occasions the excavator dies and the material passes to people with no archaeological training.
If the material is already published, the excavator has no apparent reason to refuse access to the artefacts for re-study, unless several other people have been requesting access to 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 regarding the creation of new intellectual property from the same original material and the republication of previously published material. 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 wishes to republish a photograph of a specific artefact from a book, the publisher and the photographer who originally took the picture must be contacted.
After the excavator agrees that there is no problem with the researcher gaining access to the published material and photographing or drawing it, the applicant must submit a second application to the local Ephorate and wait for a response. 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, another permit application will be required, which will be discussed by three different boards within the Ephotae and is likely to take much 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 each act is listed as a separate event), the researcher must contact the facility where the material is stored and obtain physical access to it. This is another Odyssey in its 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 require the researcher to submit a copy of their work to everyone who 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 a few privileged individuals and 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: the state. Often, such people operate as units rather than as parts of the same mechanism and are likely to generate different problems at different phases of an archaeological project, leading 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 who 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 the fact that every university-based researcher can claim paternity for their ideas, the final product does not belong to the researcher. Academic institutions require researchers to sign off their work with the university so it can be uploaded for free to a thesis database under the institution’s name. In my opinion, this is probably the best way for researchers to make their work publicly available; what I disagree with, however, is that the whole process does not allow them to say no if they have different plans for their work. If a researcher decides not to transfer the rights to his/her work to the university, the university may refuse to grant him/her a title and degree. To be fair, institutions tend to give researchers the option to place a 1-year bar on access to the content of their work, which can be renewed in exceptional cases for up to 2 years. Given that a single five-page article in Classical Archaeology could take up to six years to be published, a one-year bar on access for a monograph is completely pointless.
The other problem is that institutions treat archaeological theses as full publications, even though when uploaded to an institution’s database, they do not count as ‘proper’ publications. In my opinion, if a PhD thesis has been reviewed and proofread by the examiners and has the approval of an institution, it has every right to be a real publication, not a large-scale academic exercise.
While treating a thesis as a full-style publication (at least in theory), universities are putting huge pressure on researchers to obtain the approval of all parties before using material protected under Creative Commons legislation. This means that for every picture, graph, or chart included in a thesis, the researcher must identify the owner of the intellectual property and obtain approval for each item separately. If either party decides that their intellectual property should not be republished, the researcher must remove it from their thesis. It is much easier if the thesis does not include any such material from the beginning; however, there are occasions when the thesis supervisor and examiners demand their inclusion 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 out 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 out many images in their theses, and the final text will (of course) make no sense to readers. Having ‘black’ fields in a piece of archaeological work is not only anti-aesthetic, but also affects the coherence of the text and the reader’s understanding. The alternative is to go through a long, stressful process of applying for 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 printed a photo, graph, or 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 no longer exists, or the person who originally produced the item has departed. In such cases, the researcher needs to conduct much more research to determine who holds the intellectual property rights for this specific material. Doing this on top of everything else that has been researched over many years of work will definitely put people off.
Another surreal case is when the intellectual property rights of an item are reserved in a country whose legislation requires perpetual 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 to the 1920s containing illustrated material that cannot be reproduced without the permission of the institution that financed that specific study 100 years ago, even though the publishing company is now defunct and the original author and his heirs are all dead. To grant such a permit, the funding body may require payment of an annual royalty fee. The fee may not be huge; however, any extra cost beyond what a self-funded researcher has spent over 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 he/she has to pay out of his/her own pocket. Even if the research is funded by a funding body, it is unlikely that the funding body will be willing to cover annual royalties to third parties for as long as the thesis remains in existence.
Personally, I not only find institutions' attitudes dictatorial but also hypocritical and extremely annoying. If universities wish to act as real publishers by using other people’s work, they first 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 that protects their work after it 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 master's 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 at a disadvantage, as in most cases the publisher utilises the technological and financial resources to produce a volume; therefore, the publisher needs to retain 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, extraordinarily expensive.
When I was an undergraduate student at the Open University, I worked full-time until very late in the afternoons; therefore, I had limited time to visit the libraries to work on my assignments and had to buy most of the books. Needless to say, 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 on a book. Despite this volume being by far one of the most interesting pieces of work I had ever read, it was so expensive that it messed up 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 from £20 to £40, while rarer hard copies can reach £250 or more. 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 so that only institutions with substantial budgets can afford them (e.g., public libraries, universities, research institutions, and museums).
The cost of academic publications excludes many 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 earn their living in non-library-related sectors, the only way to access and read books during their free time is to buy 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 concerns the technical means required to produce an academic volume, such as the cost of paper and ink, editing, illustration, and book design, as well as the salaries and running costs of printing facilities. In reality, however, this is not true. If one compares the prices of a physical and a digital copy of the same book online, this person will obviously see that the physical copy is only a couple of pounds cheaper than the digital version. This suggests that the cost of the material used to produce a physical copy represents only a small fraction of the copy’s price and, in most cases, 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 publishers are too greedy, or additional costs associated with copyright licensing of academic work add to the final cost of books.
Without excluding the first possibility, I would like to focus more on copyright and intellectual property restrictions, which appear to be the main factors driving the high cost of academic books, especially in archaeology. As explained above, access to primary resources is limited by Creative Commons restrictions, and if royalties need to be paid to multiple parties before publishing a research paper, the author and the publisher will pass those costs on 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 in place by the excavators and/or other authors in the first place to protect their rights to the archaeological material used to produce their own books. Furthermore, copyright restrictions were also introduced to ensure publishers made a profit once their volumes were in the market. So, what do all these mean? Apparently, the cost of intellectual property and copyright in the publishing industry is again tied to the greed of authors and 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 high and falls heavily on 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, expensive volumes at 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 platforms.
As with the popular commercial arts, the circulation of unauthorised copies in the arts and humanities is linked to the price of the final products. The more expensive a piece of work, the more the probability of being copied and shared illegally for free. Unlike commercial literature, however, academic books are used as intellectual tools, not only read in one go for pleasure but also constantly revisited and referenced whenever a new piece of academic work is 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 can the copying procedure not be monitored or prevented, but over the years, an established tradition has allowed book copying to take place for the enhancement of knowledge.
The solution to the Creative Commons problem
What I am about to suggest is a radical solution to eliminate the problems caused by bureaucracy and the legal complications arising from Creative Commons restrictions and intellectual property rights. As we live in the age of technology, where the internet disseminates information quickly and to a wide audience, there is absolutely no reason to control its circulation. 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 that serve only to enforce prevention and exclusion. Finding legal obstacles to restricting access, study, and reproduction of archaeological resources is not helping anybody and 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 derived from 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 on protecting the rights of an established archaeological elite, the system should promote the generation of new archaeological knowledge.
To do so, countries should promote legislation that supports private initiatives in archaeological research and minimises bureaucratic complications. Firstly, intellectual property rights over archaeological materials should be limited to a maximum of 3 years after the completion of any excavation. Secondly, the legal ownership of archaeological materials should be limited to a single party, preferably the local government. Thirdly, the duration of copyright restrictions for academic books needs to be limited between three and five years, and only for their commercial exploitation. Fourthly, the current academic system needs to recognise that online publications have the same validity as conventional publications. By doing so, the circulation of academic work through online media will expand more rapidly, and so will the promotion of scientific knowledge. Finally, for countries with strict legislation and complex restrictions, such as Greece, the system needs to be completely revised to allow greater access and freedom of movement for 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 a century ago. When Greek archaeology was in its infancy, 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 in which these institutions are based, 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 closely linked to land development, and there is generally strong demand for archaeologists in the European market; however, most archaeologists graduating from universities are either unemployed or prefer careers in other industries. This problem warrants further discussion and will be the topic of a separate article.