This is a response to Stevan's message (below) as well as posts from Christopher Green (of York U.) and Marvin Margoshes. I concentrates primarily on some access and political and economic issues.
1. It may well be that "securing paper copies for teachers and students is not the focus of this Forum." Fine. But if those who have initiated this list and support the self-archiving proposal ( and I think, as well, that it has a number of merits....) wish self archiving to have a practical future outside the confines of this list, I think that you do need to provide some answers to the type of questions that I and others have asked. In other words, what I assume to be central to the self-archiving proposal is the creation of a non-tollgated public domain of academic writing...or, in property terms,making such material, in part, common property (though reserving and preserving the important right of attribution, the right to include where this material came from....or who created it and how it became common property.) This right of attribution is much more important than the infringement questions I raised; I take some of Stevan's points on this matter. I raised them because traditionally infringement questions have been much more central to IP and copyright in Anglo-US IP law (where moral rights/right of attribution have had a decidedly second place.)What you are seeking, I take it, is the creation of common property that is not fenced in and not commodified ( "giveaway texts") and that is "freely accessible to all." 2. So the first question is, who makes up this "all"? From my reading of list, I take it your first priority is online access by researchers,those who produce for archives and those who wish to use archives in their own research. (call them Group A) Again fine. But what about others? That is, teachers who want to use such material for teaching purposes, students, those who want to make paper copies, those without personal online access, those in GROUP A who are also teachers(call them Group B). Unless A can convince B that this proposal is a good one, that is, also in their interest, and unite A &B to oppose the opponents of self-archiving (and your forum has contained plenty of details on these "baddies"), this proposal will have a short shelf life and never catch on,I suggest, beyond A. 3. In this regard, C. Green statement that "soon we'll simply expect students" to have "hand-held devices that access the web remotely e.g. from the classroom" is interesting. I ask: who will pay for them? individuals? the state (that is, taxpayers)? And where? In affluent 1st world countries? In poorer 3rd world countries? This is a question this list needs to address, I think. And if you don't and do not take into account the trends in higher education finance in the UK, the US and elsewhere, you face the danger of creating a further "information rich" / " information poor" divide. I assume, in other words, that you actually do want to create an information democracy and not reproduce the current and unjust market-based and property-based (that is, private property based) system in information. And although hard copy is already on the decline, it still will be around for some time I suggest and in some places, for much longer than others. It will be a very long time before university students in Zimbabwe (Group B) have hand-held web access devices. Will Group A simply be researcher + the richest students in 1st world countries? So such access issues must be examined. 4. Marvin writes" UK law may differ, but in the US it is okay to make copies of copyright material for teaching." They certainly do differ; Charles Oppenheim and others in the UK lis-copyseek discussion group spend literally hundreds of hours trying to work through the interpretative ins and outs of the UK's nightmarish Higher Education Copying Accord (HECA).And I am a member of another group, the Copyright in Higher Education Workgroup (CHEW) that is working for the dramatic overhauling/repeal of HECA. So the copyright issue for teaching purposes (e.g. student study packs), for libraries ( e.g. short loan or reserve collections) is a very real one here. Which is exactly one of the main reasons why I am interested in seeing what "self-archiving" proposal. And even in the US, Marvin, copyright IS AN ISSUE for teaching purposes. 5. Marvin, yes I understand that "copyright is property." I have taught IP for 5 years and have written extensively on property law ( Modern Law Review, Journal of Political Philosophy.) This was the particularly "non-collegial" comment that got "up my nose." 6. I want to applaud a number of comments in Stevan's first response to my original note. A good spirit, I think. At the same time, some of the legal issues are, in my opinion, somewhat more complex than you suggest. If I had more time, I would respond in more detail. Cheers Alan Story On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 23:18:02 +0000 Stevan Harnad <har...@coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Alan Story wrote: > > > Perhaps I don't know who the moderator of Sept.98 is. It > > was the comment I got from a person named "Marvin" that I > > did not find collegial. > > Marvin Margoshes is not the moderator; in fact, he is the > one who recently recommended that I step down as > moderator... > > > Until every desk in every university classroom has its own > > web-accessible computer (still some way off...), there > will > be an interest in paper copies by university > teachers. > Paper copies are indispensable in the form > student course > packs for study and discussion and debate > in class by > reference to words in a text that everyone > see in front of > them. Hard copy is not dead yet for > instructional > purposes. > > That may well be, but securing paper copies for teachers > and students is not the focus of this Forum. The focus is > freeing the research literature online for researchers. Of > course a spin-off of this will be free online access for > teachers and students too; but this is not the place to > fight the photo-copying war: Paper publishing has > genuine costs that must be covered. It could conceivably be > true that photo-copying threatened the coverage of those > costs in the on-paper era. But we are talking here about > another medium and another era. The online-only medium will > free papers of paper costs; let us not obscure this > straighforward fact by advocating a hybrid agenda that > would not be fully justifiable in and of itself. > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > Stevan Harnad har...@cogsci.soton.ac.uk > Professor of Cognitive Science > har...@princeton.edu Department of Electronics and > phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science > fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, > Southampton > http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM > > NOTE: A complete archive of this ongoing discussion of > providing free access to the refereed journal literature is > available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & > 99 & 00): > > > http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html > > You may join the list at the site above. > > Discussion can be posted to: > > american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org ---------------------- Alan Story Kent Law School Eliot College University of Kent Canterbury Kent UK CT2 7NS a.c.st...@ukc.ac.uk Ph. 01227 823316 Fax 01227 827831