Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
Texts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual property. To refer to a text as someone's intellectual property spreads a dangerous propaganda term which also spreads confusion. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation of why this is so.) The text is still the author's intellectual property, in the sense that authorship is retained by the author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, That is even more confusing, since it stretches the meaning of intellectual property even further than normal. To avoid confusion, I suggest you rewrite it as follows: When you write an article, you are the copyright holder; you are free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line (e.g., by self-archiving), as you see fit.
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Richard Stallman wrote: shTexts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual shproperty. To refer to a text as someone's intellectual property spreads a dangerous propaganda term which also spreads confusion. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation of why this is so.) Richard, I've read the GNU passage, and I agree that intellectual property is not a good descriptor for software, as code can be built onto and out of others' code and programmers and users are better served if the code is open and can be modified by others. But this formula simply does not fit text. The text I write is indeed my intellectual property, even if it is give-away text. All that means is that no one else is allowed to claim to have authored it. Now that I have read your recommended passage, can I ask you to read mine? 5. PostGutenberg Copyright Concerns http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#5 We are in agreement that copyright lawyers and perhaps legislators are trying to force disparate things -- like music, patents, software, and texts (both give-away and non-give-away) -- into the same Procrstean bed, and that the results are not only unsatisfactory but sometimes even logically incoherent. But it is important that you should not do the same thing either! What is good for and true of software is not necessarily good for and true of texts. shThe text is still the author's shintellectual property, in the sense that authorship is retained by shthe author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, That is even more confusing, since it stretches the meaning of intellectual property even further than normal. Not at all. What could be simpler? I wrote this text. No one else may claim to have written it. End of story. (The rest is about whether or not I deem it a give-away text.) Copyright has (and always has had) at least two functions: (1) To protect against theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism) (2) To protect against theft-of-text (piracy, a word I know you don't like, when applied to software, but perfectly valid when applied to non-give-away text) ALL text authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property (sic), their text, from (1), theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism). Only NON-give-away authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property, their non-give-away text, from (2), theft-of-text (piracy). You are quite right that (1) has nothing to do with copying in the sense of making copies bearing the author's correct name. So perhaps the legal protection against plagiarism should not be subsumed under copyright law in this sense. But that is a mere terminological matter, for one can certainly describe copying my text without my name, and affixing your name to it, as an illicit form of copying. So maybe it should stay under copyright law after all. To avoid confusion, I suggest you rewrite it as follows: When you write an article, you are the copyright holder; you are free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line (e.g., by self-archiving), as you see fit. Unfortunately, that does not quite cover it. For an author may be foolish enough to sign a copyright transfer agreement, assigning all rights to give away or sell his texts, online or on paper, to someone else, say, a publisher. But that would still not alter the matter of intellectual property, i.e., authorship. He would still be the author. And if someone else claimed to have authored it, it would still be a violation of his rights, even after he had assigned the copyright, without restrictions, to a publisher. I am not an expert in this (nor especially interested in it, I might add), but I believe that it is only if an author puts his text in the public domain that he loses the intellectual property rights, i.e., he cannot prosecute someone for plagiarizing it. (I am not sure about this last matter, and someone may wish to correct me, but please, let us not side-track the Forum discussion into these esoteric paths http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1713.html as it is not what we are concerned about here. We are concerned with GIVEAWAY texts -- peer-reviewed research articles -- for which their authors definitely want to retain their authorship (their intellectual proprietership); but they also want those full-texts to be accessible online, and fully copiable, for free for all.) See also: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1309.html Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 99 00 01): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html or
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
One question and one comment. Thomas, are you suggesting that PhD students should not have to pay the printing and binding costs of their theses? That the University should print and bind the thesis for the student free of charge? Or, more sensibly, that the University should stop requiring printed theses and allow submission in electronic form -- on a CD-ROM, if they wish to avoid any subsequent changes to the thesis? Re tollgating entry to the academic profession -- it needs to noted that only a minority of PhDs become academics. Some go off to practice their profession in non-academic environments, and others leave their academic field and become accountants, managers or whatever. Fytton. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: Fytton Rowland writes But here the students usually just groan and bear it! Getting the money for the printing cost back sounds like a flimsy excuse to me. If someone does a doctorate to become a member of the academic profession, then toll-gating the PhD does not seem to me to be a good strategy, because of the adverse effects that it has on dissemination. And the same thing should hold for libraries. Libraries should pay for printing out students work, archive local dissertations on paper (because of the problems of digital preservation), and make them available through Eprints, and pay for this by not buying dissertations produced anywhere else, or reduce serials holdings. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
It has always been quite easy (if you have the money) to get a book printed. Publishers are not printers. The business of getting a book printed is only one (and not the most important) of a publishing company's functions. Editing to improve the quality of the raw product from the author is one of the important ones, and marketing to bring it to the attention of those who might be interested in its content is the other. I believe that both of these functions remain important in an electronic-only environment. Fytton Rowland. Quoting muir gray muir.g...@ntlworld.com: I think the debate is too focussed on the fiuture of the journal and am pleased to see that it now addresses the monograph. a colleague abd i have just made a mongraph by working directly with a printer and making simulataneouspaper and electronic forms opf the book with no need for bookshops or warehouses. the printing revolution isas important as the pagemaking revolution muir gray www.resourcefulpatient.org - Original Message - From: Oldroyd, Bill bill.oldr...@bl.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 1:47 PM Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers Just for the record, Bill -Original Message- From: Tim Brody [mailto:tdb...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: 19 July 2002 13:02 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Book on future of STM publishers It would seem, therefore, that research dissertations may be a potentially valuable resource after all - one that for too long has been accessible only from library archives. Approximately 140,000 UK theses are available from the British Library as non-digital copies or exceptionally as loans to registered institutions. See http://www.bl.uk/services/document/btsindex.html Bill ** Now open at the British Library Galleries: Trading Places : the East India Company and Asia (to 22 September) * The information contained in this e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this e-mail and notify the postmas...@bl.uk : The contents of this e-mail must not be disclosed or copied without the sender's consent. The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the British Library. The British Library does not take any responsibility for the views of the author. *
Re: Ingenta to offer OAI eprint service
The posting on July 18th from Stevan relates to email messages sent to both Stevan and Ingenta by myself and the Electronic Publishing Trust (EPT), respectively. I would like to make clear that we were not concerned about copyright issues, the legitimate activities of commercial organisations, commercial publishers (we work with many from the developing world) nor even about filling the archives. Our concern is solely about the possible development of a two-tier eprint software system that would emerge as a result of a commercial development in parallel with the free-of-cost software. It seems to us that where this scenario exists, the non-commercial system will likely be of a less well-developed standard. Filling the archives is essential, but filled archives without the eprint software to provide global access to them must be as useless as empty archives. It is very true that scientists in developing countries are highly enthusiastic about the potential for free access to the world's scientific literature that institutional archives present. The EPT is active in raising awareness about the OAI and associated services (www.epublishingtrust.org). But scientists in the developing countries have important research information to contribute to the global knowledge base, and raising visibility of this through their own institutional archives is also seen to be a very important opportunity. Closing the S to N knowledge gap, making visible the 'missing' science, are real challenges that archives in developing countries can help to resolve. It is difficult for academic authors in the developed world to relate to the feeling of isolation and impotence that scientists feel if their research remains largely unknown and unacknowledged, as is too often the case at present in the developing world. Moreover, the importance of the research generated in these regions is of huge relevance to the development of international research programmes - particularly in such areas as AIDS, malaria, TB, ecology and conservation, where local conditions and local knowledge are significant factors. Therefore, the OAI movement was increasingly regarded as a light at the end of the tunnel and one-for-all software the ideal tool. We remain concerned that as the commercial system develops, the scientists in the poorer countries will have no choice but to use the non-commercial software. If the development of this will indeed forge ahead at the same rate as that developed by Ingenta, this will be reassuring. But the new commercial arrangement suggests that the current software has need of improved user support, so perhaps the BOAI initiative could be encouraged to focus on supporting archives in the developing world by funding the development of installation or self-archiving manuals. Archives in the developing regions would be quickly filled, since the global recognition they provide would be greatly encouraging to scientific development, both personally and nationally. Barbara Kirsop Electronic Publishing Trust for Development www.epublishingtrust.org Stevan Harnad wrote: This is a reply to another commentator's expression of concern (excerpt will be quoted shortly) about the license that Southampton University has given to Ingenta to develop a commercial service to install, customize and maintain Eprints Archives for Universities wish to purchase such a service. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2108.html The commentator's concern is that the Ingenta version of the software may become better than the free version, and that this will increase rather than decrease the digital divide for poorer countries. The gist of the reply has already made in this Forum: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2111.html The GNU license for the free version not only requires that the free version remain freely available, but it also requires that all alterations in the software be freely available, both to all users and to all programmers who are doing further modifications of the code. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2118.html Moreover, any revenues received from Ingenta by Southampton University will be used to continue to develop and support the free version. This has already been stated in this Forum. The point to be addressed here is the specific one, about developing countries and the digital divide: The commentator who is quoted (anonymously) below expresses some entirely understandable yet entirely groundless worries. I would have preferred to reply to the entire message in full openly, but as it was not posted, I reply only to the anonymized excerpt. I think we have come to a point where it is very important to express explicit commitment to the support of the free version of Eprints, by way of reassurance to the developing world. http://software.eprints.org/ This is not because there is any danger at all that Southampton University would betray the project, nor because there is
Access-Denial, Impact-Denial and the Developing and Developed World
On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Barbara Kirsop wrote: Our concern is solely about the possible development of a two-tier eprint software system that would emerge as a result of a commercial development in parallel with the free-of-cost software. It seems to us that where this scenario exists, the non-commercial system will likely be of a less well-developed standard. I greatly admire the work of Barbara Kirsop and her colleague and BOAI co-founder, Leslie Chan, as well as their respective organizations, the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development http://www.epublishingtrust.org and Bioline International http://www.bioline.org.br/ on behalf of the developing world. Although I don't think that what Barbara fears could come to pass will actually come to pass, for the reasons I have already given earlier in this thread, I entirely understand why she is so concerned. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2149.html Filling the archives is essential, but filled archives without the eprint software to provide global access to them must be as useless as empty archives. I can't quite follow this scenario: The free eprints.org software is for CREATING the OAI-compliant Eprint Archives, not for accessing and using them. The archives (all interoperable) are accessed and used by searching them and retrieving their open-access contents. For this there are (among other ways of searching them, such as google) the OAI-compliant Service Providers http://www.openarchives.org/service/listproviders.html which have nothing directly to do with the archive-creating software, whether the free GNU version http://software.eprints.org/ or the Ingenta version. They are indifferent to how the archives were created, as long as they are OAI-compliant (and filled!). So on Barbara's premise that the Eprint Archives are filled, it is not at all clear what further worry one ought to have. (My own worry is rather about speeding up the rate at which that premise is fulfilled!) It is very true that scientists in developing countries are highly enthusiastic about the potential for free access to the world's scientific literature that institutional archives present. The EPT is active in raising awareness about the OAI and associated services (www.epublishingtrust.org). But scientists in the developing countries have important research information to contribute to the global knowledge base, and raising visibility of this through their own institutional archives is also seen to be a very important opportunity. Closing the S to N knowledge gap, making visible the 'missing' science, are real challenges that archives in developing countries can help to resolve. I agree completely, and said so in my prior reply. Maximizing access to research output by self-archiving it in Open Access Eprint Archives maximizes the visibility, usage and impact of research: Lawrence, S. (2001a) Online or Invisible? Nature 411 (6837): 521. http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/ Lawrence, S. (2001b) Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact. Nature Web Debates. http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html However, I also noted in my prior reply (and others can correct me if I am wrong about this), that the visibility of their own research to the developed world is not the primary problem of developing world research and researchers. The real boon to the developing world that the eprints software is meant to provide will not come from the adoption of the software and the creation of Eprints Archives in the developing world, providing open access to the developing world's research output. As welcome and beneficial as that will be to the visibility and impact of developing-world research, that is NOT the developing world's primary problem! Their [primary] problem is ACCESS to the research output of the DEVELOPED world! http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2149.html Perhaps this is a good occasion to make more explicit a general point about the causal connection between accessibility and visibility/impact, and hence about the logic and motivation of the open access movement (BOAI): (1) Toll-based access-barriers to research output prevent those researchers whose institutions cannot afford the tolls from accessing and hence using the research. (2) This has two effects: (2a) access-denial to research output diminishes the quality of the research output of its would-be USERS, because their own research fails to be informed by and built upon the research they cannot access, and (2b) access-denial to research output diminishes the impact of the research itself, denying its AUTHORS and their institutions the full benefits of their findings (in the form of visibility, usage, citations, and the resulting rewards such as research funding, career advancement, honors, and
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
There is still confusion about the term intellectual property (IP) here. IP is not a propaganda term; it is an accurate description -- if I make somethin new, it is my property and I can decide whether to sell it, give it away, lease it, bequeath it or whatever. If I decide to sell, or give away, my IP to a publisher, I lose the right to distribute copies myself unless my agreement with the publishing company permits me to. If I retain the IP myself but choose to give away copies for nothing to anybody who wants one, I can still prevent others from selling (or giving away) copies without my permission. But whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be changed, etc. Am I right? Fytton Rowland. Quoting Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Richard Stallman wrote: shTexts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual shproperty. To refer to a text as someone's intellectual property spreads a dangerous propaganda term which also spreads confusion. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation of why this is so.) Richard, I've read the GNU passage, and I agree that intellectual property is not a good descriptor for software, as code can be built onto and out of others' code and programmers and users are better served if the code is open and can be modified by others. But this formula simply does not fit text. The text I write is indeed my intellectual property, even if it is give-away text. All that means is that no one else is allowed to claim to have authored it. Now that I have read your recommended passage, can I ask you to read mine? 5. PostGutenberg Copyright Concerns http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#5 We are in agreement that copyright lawyers and perhaps legislators are trying to force disparate things -- like music, patents, software, and texts (both give-away and non-give-away) -- into the same Procrstean bed, and that the results are not only unsatisfactory but sometimes even logically incoherent. But it is important that you should not do the same thing either! What is good for and true of software is not necessarily good for and true of texts. shThe text is still the author's shintellectual property, in the sense that authorship is retained by shhe author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, That is even more confusing, since it stretches the meaning of intellectual property even further than normal. Not at all. What could be simpler? I wrote this text. No one else may claim to have written it. End of story. (The rest is about whether or not I deem it a give-away text.) Copyright has (and always has had) at least two functions: (1) To protect against theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism) (2) To protect against theft-of-text (piracy, a word I know you don't like, when applied to software, but perfectly valid when applied to non-give-away text) ALL text authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property (sic), their text, from (1), theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism). Only NON-give-away authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property, their non-give-away text, from (2), theft-of-text (piracy). You are quite right that (1) has nothing to do with copying in the sense of making copies bearing the author's correct name. So perhaps the legal protection against plagiarism should not be subsumed under copyright law in this sense. But that is a mere terminological matter, for one can certainly describe copying my text without my name, and affixing your name to it, as an illicit form of copying. So maybe it should stay under copyright law after all. To avoid confusion, I suggest you rewrite it as follows: When you write an article, you are the copyright holder; you are free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line (e.g., by self-archiving), as you see fit. Unfortunately, that does not quite cover it. For an author may be foolish enough to sign a copyright transfer agreement, assigning all rights to give away or sell his texts, online or on paper, to someone else, say, a publisher. But that would still not alter the matter of intellectual property, i.e., authorship. He would still be the author. And if someone else claimed to have authored it, it would still be a violation of his rights, even after he had assigned the copyright, without restrictions, to a publisher. I am not an expert in this (nor especially interested in it, I might add), but I believe that it is only if an author puts his text in the public domain that he loses the intellectual property rights, i.e., he cannot prosecute someone for plagiarizing it. (I am not sure about this last matter, and someone may wish to correct me, but please, let us not side-track
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Fytton Rowland wrote: whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be changed, etc. Yes, that's my understanding too. Perhaps moral right is a more transparent term than intellectual property. I think we need to hear from Charles Oppenheim on this... (Also, what becomes of the moral right if a text is put in the public domain?) Stevan
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
I am not sure that you really want to get into this terrain but Moral rights essentially do not exist in US copyright law ( except for visual artists and in certain cirsumstances where they are not called moral rights.); indeed, US law is essentially hostile to moral rights and was able to force though a section of the TRIPS agreement exempting moral rights as a requirement for national statutory protection. Moral rights are derived from author's rights systems in Contintental Europe. They do exist in the UK by statute. Moral rights should NOT be conflated with intellectual property...and it is no more of a transparent term. Indeed moral rights is a bad translation of the French word droits moraux, roughly personal rights. Alan Story Kent Law School Canterbury UK -Original Message- From: September 1998 American Scientist Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org]On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: Monday 22 July 2002 15:07 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Fytton Rowland wrote: whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be changed, etc. Yes, that's my understanding too. Perhaps moral right is a more transparent term than intellectual property. I think we need to hear from Charles Oppenheim on this... (Also, what becomes of the moral right if a text is put in the public domain?) Stevan
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
Fytton is partly partially right in the UK context. Moral rights are available only if the original work was not written for a newspaper, magazine or periodical (so articles in electronic journals would not qualify) AND the author must assert the right at the time the work is made available. The recurring problem is that creators of copyright works (as opposed to other forms of IP) get a bundle of rights WHETHER THEY WANT THEM OR NOT and have to take steps to disclaim them rather than assert many of them. The opposite is true in the UK for moral rights. Graham Cornish Don't miss our one-day conference on Fears and hopes in copyright (September 18th. York) when we shall explore the new legislation and its implications for library management and also start to draw up a shopping list of changes we want in the future. Details at www.copyrightcircle.co.uk - Original Message - From: Fytton Rowland j.f.rowl...@lboro.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 12:39 PM Subject: Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research There is still confusion about the term intellectual property (IP) here. IP is not a propaganda term; it is an accurate description -- if I make somethin new, it is my property and I can decide whether to sell it, give it away, lease it, bequeath it or whatever. If I decide to sell, or give away, my IP to a publisher, I lose the right to distribute copies myself unless my agreement with the publishing company permits me to. If I retain the IP myself but choose to give away copies for nothing to anybody who wants one, I can still prevent others from selling (or giving away) copies without my permission. But whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be changed, etc. Am I right? Fytton Rowland. Quoting Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Richard Stallman wrote: shTexts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual shproperty. To refer to a text as someone's intellectual property spreads a dangerous propaganda term which also spreads confusion. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation of why this is so.) Richard, I've read the GNU passage, and I agree that intellectual property is not a good descriptor for software, as code can be built onto and out of others' code and programmers and users are better served if the code is open and can be modified by others. But this formula simply does not fit text. The text I write is indeed my intellectual property, even if it is give-away text. All that means is that no one else is allowed to claim to have authored it. Now that I have read your recommended passage, can I ask you to read mine? 5. PostGutenberg Copyright Concerns http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#5 We are in agreement that copyright lawyers and perhaps legislators are trying to force disparate things -- like music, patents, software, and texts (both give-away and non-give-away) -- into the same Procrstean bed, and that the results are not only unsatisfactory but sometimes even logically incoherent. But it is important that you should not do the same thing either! What is good for and true of software is not necessarily good for and true of texts. shThe text is still the author's shintellectual property, in the sense that authorship is retained by shhe author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, That is even more confusing, since it stretches the meaning of intellectual property even further than normal. Not at all. What could be simpler? I wrote this text. No one else may claim to have written it. End of story. (The rest is about whether or not I deem it a give-away text.) Copyright has (and always has had) at least two functions: (1) To protect against theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism) (2) To protect against theft-of-text (piracy, a word I know you don't like, when applied to software, but perfectly valid when applied to non-give-away text) ALL text authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property (sic), their text, from (1), theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism). Only NON-give-away authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property, their non-give-away text, from (2), theft-of-text (piracy). You are quite right that (1) has nothing to do with copying in the sense of making copies bearing the author's correct name. So perhaps the legal protection against plagiarism should not be subsumed under copyright law in this sense. But that is a mere terminological matter, for one can certainly describe copying my text without my name, and affixing your name to it, as an illicit form of copying. So maybe it
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
Moral rights always remain with the author. I agree with Richard Stallman, intellectual property is an ideologically loaded term. It implies that rights to an intellectual creation are the same as owning other assets, and that using another person's without permission is simple `theft'. Intellectual creations are fundamentally different in that not only can they easily be shared, they need to be shared. The GNU licence is one way to do this, although Stevan may be right that it has limited applicability beyond software. To develop other ways we will need to work with publishers. While Stevan is also right that we should not demonize them, I think he is wrong to suggest that we can ignore them, and that the answer (for the research literature at least) is simply in the hands of authors. His procedure for pre-prints and post-prints may be a practical one, but in my view it would not survive a legal challenge by a publisher who has obtained a standard rights assignment from the author. It is essential that we persuade as many publishers as possible to accept that authors can retain the rights to open-archive their work. One reason why academic authors have been slow to take up open-archiving may be that they think it is an alternative to publishing in the standard peer-reviewed format, rather than complementary to it. The key to complementary development is to use the power academics have over journals, via the many journals owned by societies and associations, as well as our role in the editorial processes, and ultimately in libraries' decisions on subscriptions. While Stevan is right that these are separate issues, they are intertwined threads of the same piece of string. cheers sol * Sol Picciotto Lancaster University Law School Lonsdale College Lancaster LA1 4YN direct line (44) (0)1524-592464 fax (44) (0)1524-525212 s.piccio...@lancs.ac.uk * -Original Message- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 3:07 PM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Fytton Rowland wrote: whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be changed, etc. Yes, that's my understanding too. Perhaps moral right is a more transparent term than intellectual property. I think we need to hear from Charles Oppenheim on this... (Also, what becomes of the moral right if a text is put in the public domain?) Stevan
Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research
Fytton Rowland asked: But whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be changed, etc. Am I right? Yes in droit d'auteur countries (France, Germany, etc.). Yes in the UK unless 1) the work is an explicitly excluded moral rights category like journalism, 2) the work was written for hire, or 3) the author was impelled/constrained to relinquish his/her moral rights (as generally happens in all-rights contracts in broadcasting in the UK. Journal-ism in the sense of papers written for journals would ordinarily be covered by moral rights, although it's a moot, rarely tested and probably delicate point if academics are considered as writing for hire for their institutions (probably not, but don't push it). No in the US in general, but specific cases could be defended on the basis of case law. I was going to write about this in connexion with Stevan's comments on plagiarism, which I believe could be actionable under civil law, but not necessarily under copyright. Best, Chris Zielinski Director, Information Waystations and Staging Posts Network 18 Monks Orchard, Petersfield, Hants GU32 2JD, United Kingdom Tel: Home: 0044-1730-301297 Office: 0044-1730-710324 Mobile: 0044-797-10-45354 Fax: 0044-1730-265398 e-mail: informa...@supanet.com web site: http://www.iwsp.org -Original Message- From: September 1998 American Scientist Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Fytton Rowland Sent: 22 July 2002 12:40 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research There is still confusion about the term intellectual property (IP) here. IP is not a propaganda term; it is an accurate description -- if I make somethin new, it is my property and I can decide whether to sell it, give it away, lease it, bequeath it or whatever. If I decide to sell, or give away, my IP to a publisher, I lose the right to distribute copies myself unless my agreement with the publishing company permits me to. If I retain the IP myself but choose to give away copies for nothing to anybody who wants one, I can still prevent others from selling (or giving away) copies without my permission. But whether I transfer the IP to someone else or not, in the case of text, I still retain the moral right to be identified as its author, and for it not to be changed, etc. Am I right? Fytton Rowland. Quoting Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Richard Stallman wrote: shTexts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual shproperty. To refer to a text as someone's intellectual property spreads a dangerous propaganda term which also spreads confusion. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation of why this is so.) Richard, I've read the GNU passage, and I agree that intellectual property is not a good descriptor for software, as code can be built onto and out of others' code and programmers and users are better served if the code is open and can be modified by others. But this formula simply does not fit text. The text I write is indeed my intellectual property, even if it is give-away text. All that means is that no one else is allowed to claim to have authored it. Now that I have read your recommended passage, can I ask you to read mine? 5. PostGutenberg Copyright Concerns http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#5 We are in agreement that copyright lawyers and perhaps legislators are trying to force disparate things -- like music, patents, software, and texts (both give-away and non-give-away) -- into the same Procrstean bed, and that the results are not only unsatisfactory but sometimes even logically incoherent. But it is important that you should not do the same thing either! What is good for and true of software is not necessarily good for and true of texts. shThe text is still the author's shintellectual property, in the sense that authorship is retained by shhe author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, That is even more confusing, since it stretches the meaning of intellectual property even further than normal. Not at all. What could be simpler? I wrote this text. No one else may claim to have written it. End of story. (The rest is about whether or not I deem it a give-away text.) Copyright has (and always has had) at least two functions: (1) To protect against theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism) (2) To protect against theft-of-text (piracy, a word I know you don't like, when applied to software, but perfectly valid when applied to non-give-away text) ALL text authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property (sic), their text, from (1), theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism). Only NON-give-away authors want
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Fytton Rowland writes Thomas, are you suggesting that PhD students should not have to pay the printing and binding costs of their theses? Yes. That the University should print and bind the thesis for the student free of charge? Theses have been bound and printed to make them accessible and preserve them. If universities think that this is still necessary, they should do it on behalf of the student. Or, more sensibly, that the University should stop requiring printed theses and allow submission in electronic form -- on a CD-ROM, if they wish to avoid any subsequent changes to the thesis? Universities should preserve the students' works, because students don't have the lifespan to take on that task. This is a principle that should be medium-independent. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
