> > On Wed, 30 May 2001, Albert Henderson wrote: > > Speaking more generally, it is clear that there is a > sense of publication when a work is made available on an > Internet database. This medium is different from printing > and distributing a number of copies. It differs from print, > in this context, in that it can begin and also end on the > author's command. > > When the author asks a publisher to invest in the work, > transferring the copyright to leverage that investment, > the author has a duty to remove the alternative form > of the work from public access when the copyright is > transferred. > > [snip, snip, snip]
In Albert's snips he has unfortunately deleted the portion that already replies to this. No matter how one tries to fit the PostGutenberg Web into this Procrustean Gutenberg Bed, it cannot be done, and hence legislation cannot be predicated on it (i.e., on doing the undoable): Once a text has been publicly archived by its author at one website, it is mirrored, cached, harvested, stored and restored at countless other sites Webwide till Doomsday. This Juggernaut is decidedly NOT under the "author's command," and it is unstoppable. If it would be hard to demonstrate that the pre-copyright preprint at the designated website would hurt sales, it would be impossible to demonstrate that the countless other cached copies MINUS that website would hurt them any less. And all this, remember, PRE-DATES the copyright transfer. (And all this without even considering the slippery slope of how much constitutes a prior "alternative form"...) So the only utility in invoking such obsolete, unenforceable, and incoherent legalistic menaces now is to temporarily intimidate the average, short-sighted researcher into needlessly refraining from self-archiving right now. This filibuster may work for a few years yet, but not if I (and others) can help it: The word too will propagate, just as the cached copies do... May I suggest that Albert instead direct his efforts toward protecting the vast majoritarian texts (books, magazines, newspapers) that are NOT author give-aways, from consumer cyberpiracy, via napster and gnutella? The tiny minoritarian author give-away literature (20K refereed journals-full per annum) is just a flea on the tail of this dog, and its liberation by its own authors is not only optimal (for research and researchers and society) and inevitable, but just: It can only be delayed by disinformation, not stopped. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#9.1 In the past decade, 150,000 such papers have already been self-archived by the Physicists (who are decidedly more far-sighted than the average researcher, and will get historic credit for having led the way) without a single attempt at legal action along the lines Albert is here brandishing. Wizard-of-Oz intimidation is the last recourse of the defenders of an obsolete and indefensible means of disseminating give-away refereed research findings. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] 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 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 You may join the list at the site above. Discussion can be posted to: [email protected]
