Leading Open Access Supporters Ask EU To Investigate Elsevier's Alleged 'Anti-Competitive Practices'

Furnished content.


Back in the summer, we wrote about the paleontologist Jon Tennant, who had submitted a formal complaint to the European Commission regarding the relationship between the publishing giant Elsevier and the EU's Open Science Monitor. Now Tennant has joined with another leading supporter of open access, Björn Brembs, in an even more direct attack on the company and its practices, reported here by the site Research Europe:

Two academics have demanded the European Commission investigate the academic publisher Elsevier for what they say is a breach of EU competition rules that is harming research.Palaeontologist Jon Tennant and neuroscientist Björn Brembs, who are both advocates for making research results openly available, say the academic publishing market "is clearly not functioning well" in an official complaint about Elsevier's parent company RELX Group.The pair claim RELX and Elsevier are in breach of EU rules both due to general problems with the academic publishing market and "abuse of a dominant position within this market".

For research to progress, access to all available relevant sources is required, which means that there is no ability to transfer or substitute products, and there is little to no inter-brand competition from the viewpoint of consumers. If a research team requires access to knowledge contained within a journal, they must have access to that specific journal, and cannot substitute it for a similar one published by a competitor. Indeed, the entire corpus of research knowledge is built on this vital and fundamental process of building on previously published works, which drives up demand for all relevant published content. As such, publishers do not realistically compete with each other, as all their products are fundamentally unique (i.e., each publisher has a 100% market share for each journal or article), and unequivocally in high demand due to the way scholarly research works. The result of this is that consumers (i.e., research institutions and libraries) have little power to make cost-benefit evaluations to decide whether or not to purchase, and have no choice but to pay whatever price the publishers asks with little transparency over costs, which we believe is a primary factor that has contributed to more than a 300% rise in journal prices above inflation since 1986. Thus, we believe that a functional and competitive market is not currently able to form due to the practices of dominant players, like Elsevier, in this sector.

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CDA 230 Doesn't Support Habeus Petition by 'Revenge Pornographer'

Furnished content.


As you may recall, Kevin Bollaert ran UGotPosted, which published third-party submitted nonconsensual pornography, and ChangeMyReputation.com, which offered depicted individuals a "pay-to-remove" option. Bollaert appeared multiple times in my inventory of nonconsensual pornography enforcement actions. Bollaert's conduct was disgusting, and I have zero sympathy for him. Nevertheless, I also didn't love the path prosecutors took to bust him. The lower court convicted him of 24 counts of identity theft and 7 counts of extortion and sentenced him to 8 years in jail and 10 years of supervised release. Pay-to-remove sites are not inherently extortive, and identity theft crimes often overreach to cover distantly related activities.Worse, the appeals court affirmed the convictions despite a significant Section 230 defense. The opinion contorted Section 230 law, relying on outmoded legal theories from Roommates.com. Fortunately, I haven't seen many citations to the appellate court's misinterpretation of Section 230, so the doctrinal damage to Section 230 hasn't spread too much (yet). However, that still leaves open whether Bollaert's conviction was correct.Bollaert raised that issue by filing a habeus corpus petition in federal court. Such petitions are commonly filed and almost never granted, so Bollaert's petition had minimal odds of success as a matter of math. Not surprisingly, his petition fails.The district court says that Section 230's application to Bollaert's circumstance does not meet the rigorous standard of "clearly established federal law":

In this case, the Supreme Court has never recognized that the CDA applies in state criminal actions. The Supreme Court has never indicated circumstances that would qualify a state criminal defendant for CDA immunity. Absence of applicable Supreme Court precedent defeats the contention that Petitioner is entitled to CDA immunity under clearly established federal law...federal circuits have not applied CDA immunity in state criminal actions or indicated circumstances that would qualify a state criminal defendant for CDA immunity. Petitioner cannot satisfy 2254(d)(1) with district court opinions applying CDA immunity in state criminal actions.

the California Court of Appeal performed an exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of the applicable circuit court decisions before concluding Petitioner is an information content provider under Roommates. The state court reasonably interpreted Roommates and Jones, and reasonably concluded that Petitioner "developed, at least in part, the offensive content on his Web site by requiring users to input private and personal information as a condition of posting the victims' pictures, making him an information content provider within the meaning of the CDA."

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