Conyers has been sparring against Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford professor with a lot of digital clout, on the Huffington Post about the measure. He argues the bill, as the title of it implies, protects copyrights and peer reviews while repealing a provision slipped into another bill in the middle of the night that wouldn’t receive proper debate.

That provision, backed by Lessig, 33 Nobel prize winners, and the National Institutes of Health, would ensure the public has open access to all taxpayer funded research. While Conyers is crying foul on procedural grounds and arguing that late-night addition can’t be supported just because one happens to like the intent, Lessig and company are noting that the cosponsors of the bill all have received twice as much money in campaign contributions from the paper publishing industry than others.

At the same time, Lessig is promoting his donor strike, a movement to get donors to withhold contributions until Congress reforms the campaign finance system.

Conyers’ opponents on this issue argue that disallowing public posting results in taxpayers paying for research twice, and that opening up that research will exponentially increase the rate of scientific growth while helping the medical industry access the latest research on treating illnesses.

Conyers has argued that publishers rely on subscriptions to fund the peer review process that creates better, more credible collections of research. Scientific journals typically reward good science with publishing (e.g., the researchers typically are paid with a publishing credit, not money).

Conyers has come out swinging on this from a defensive viewpoint, but his argument isn’t holding water. Besides that the public shouldn’t have to pay for something twice, nothing bars scientists from waiting a year to publish research publicly. Further, the argument that publishers would no longer have incentive to peer review and publish research collections is specious at best. The peer review is what creates the value of the research, not the copyright, and presumably nothing would prevent publishers from selling their own peer-reviewed packages, which would create value for the science consumer in that he wouldn’t have to sift through the masses of poor research out there.

Yes, we know, Harvard research may be even less interesting to you than ancient Japanese manuscripts; it could be dry reading, as opposed to interesting symbols on dusty papers.  Still, the spread of such research for free – whereas it is usually only available through pricy subscription journals – is an important thing.

Building up to the big announcement, Peter Suber wrote, "Harvard will be the first university in the US to adopt an OA [open access] mandate.  The Harvard policy will also be one of the first anywhere to be adopted by faculty themselves rather than by administrators."

Harvard is, in case you didn’t know, on a pretty high pedestal, so publishers won’t really be able to say "no" to the move.  Also, the development is the sort of thing that other universities are liable to imitate.

On a final note, Harvard is, by the way, already a partner within the Google Books Library Project.

With this promised bid, Google has taken away arguments from incumbent telecommunications opposition that openness requirements would devalue the spectrum and limit competition.

The pledge carries with it stipulations, though. In a letter to FCC chairman Kevin Martin, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said it would only bid if the FCC adopted all four proposed openness requirements as part of the license conditions.

The four requirements are:

·    Open applications: Consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;

·    Open devices: Consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;

·    Open services: Third parties (resellers) should be able to acquire wireless services from a 700 MHz licensee on a wholesale basis, based on reasonably nondiscriminatory commercial terms; and

·    Open networks: Third parties (like internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at any technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee’s wireless network.

By ensuring a slice of spectrum remains open, proponents hope incumbents will be prevented from buying up the spectrum, formerly used by broadcast television and ideal for true wireless broadband Internet, hoarding it and doling it out in a way that is costly and unfair to consumers.

 "In short," said Schmidt, "when Americans can use the software and handsets of their choice, over open and competitive networks, they win."

Chris Sacca, Google’s Head of Special Initiatives, expands on this concept on the Google Public Policy Blog:

As numerous public interest organizations noted earlier this week, all four of these conditions adopted together would promote a spirit of openness, and could spur additional forms of competition from web-based entities, such as software applications providers, content providers, handset makers, and ISPs. The big winners? Consumers. As choices increase, prices come down and more Americans have access to the Net.

Google is sitting on a mountain of cash. Yesterday, the company reported $12.5 billion in cash holdings in their second quarter earnings report. In the past, Google has had to be careful with how its money is allocated, as the SEC has threatened to change their classification status to "investment fund."

Dropping as much as $5 billion on spectrum would help control for concerns like that, and move the company into the long awaited ISP everyone (ahem, almost) knew it would become.

"What Chairman Martin is proposing isn’t true open access, and it won’t create the broadband competition we need," said S. Derek Turner, research director at Free Press.

But, but…he said!

Frank Rose at Wired.com says that Martin’s new rules "include several key provisions that make it unlikely an open network would ever actually be built. For example, they are said to allow the winner to offer retail service only. That might force the auction winner to open its network to unapproved devices, but it wouldn’t actually force competition. So we’d end up with something like wireline broadband today: Users could hook up any device they wanted to, but they’d still be limited to only a couple of service providers."

So what happened?

"Aware of how closely watched this proceeding has become, Martin has opened his push for rules with a controlled PR offensive," writes Howard Feld. "Most notably, he has sought to create confusion for the public interest community and Silicon Valley folks by changing the definition of the word ‘open access.’

"It helps that Martin has been more successful than any other Chairman I can recall in stopping leaks at the FCC — usually by transferring the offending parties to the FCC equivalent of outer Siberia as a warning to others. This has given Martin an unparalleled opportunity to control the information flow and the public debate through strategic press leaks and interviews."

Oh, that’s just dirty.

Luckily, there’s still good guys working on this. Free Press, the organization behind SaveTheInternet.com, launched a new initiative called FreetheiPhone.org, which aims to ensure competition and freedom in the wireless space.

"This issue goes well beyond the iPhone. It’s about a dysfunctional wireless system that stifles innovation and competition across the country," said Timothy Karr, Free Press campaign director. "We need real open access, which opens networks for innovation and wholesale markets for competition. Until we have this, the iPhone — and other innovative gadgets like it — will never reach full potential."

Free Press’s Ben Scott explains more about this at YouTube.