Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Working Norway/USA?

Your cooperation is from the 9th of December regulated by an agreement (PDF in Norwegian) between Norway and the United States concerning research and scientific cooperation. The agreement covers all kinds of research and unless there are other agreements, is the default position for cooperation. It will not change a lot in our regular cooperation, but there are a few interesting points:

- People who might otherwise have problems leaving USA due to for instance security concerns, are to be allowed travel in order to facilitate cooperation. Not such a big deal for most game researchers I know, but for those who work in the more regulated areas of computing, it may be.

- All participants have equal rights to publish material which is the result of cooperation. This has been a real issue at times, as the rules concerning citation, copyright and what the document calls "immaterial rights" are different in Norway and the US. While these are quite lenient in Norway, the restrictions on the US side could make publication elsewhere problematic.

- Both nations are to allow for research equipment both to enter and leave their territory. While I mostly imagine huge research ships slowly crossing from international to national waters when reading those words, it may also mean something as simple as carrying with us a computer or just a disc filled up with cutting edge software. Before this agreement, we could have been either refused to enter or stopped leaving with this information, now we can all relax and steer our research ships happily past those serious-looking borderguards.

OK, so my life won't change on the 9th, but it is nice to know that somebody works to facilitate the free flow of information and research.

No comments: