This post contains two separate issues, my apologies if this is a bit confusing.
With respect to derivatives and liability, or more broadly, derivatives and responsibility: I do not think that gmail and privacy is a relevant analogy. If you look up the Wikipedia article on pharmacology, you will see that the etymology of the word is "poison" in classic Greek; "drug" in modern Greek. The field encompasses both pharmacology and toxicology for a good reason; the difference between a drug and a poison is a dose. A derivative that adds or subtracts a number to a recommended dose could easily kill someone. Whether this results in legal action or not, it's worth avoiding. I don't know whether scholars in this area are comfortable with allowing derivatives or not. If they are not, I don't think it is appropriate to require them to allow derivatives. This is just one example - there could be many more, in medicine alone, where relying on information in a faulty derivative could have harmful effects in the real world. I don't know how frequently this might happen, or whether this would be a greater or a lesser problem than not allowing derivatives. My point is that no one else knows, either; so if a researcher thinks it is best not to allow derivatives, they should be allowed to specify this. Wikipedia pharmacology article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology Aside from the potential for harm, there are other valid scholarly reasons why researchers might not be keen on derivatives. In some areas of humanities and social sciences, changing wording could substantially change the meaning of a work. When derivatives are combined with attribution, a flawed derivative (in the eyes of the original author) could have a negative impact on the author's reputation, in a field where reputation is the key to getting and keeping a job. If an author is not comfortable with allowing derivatives, I don't think that they should be forced to do so. Or to get back to google - perhaps a more appropriate analogy would involve requiring google to share its algorithms and let competitors create derivatives, for commercial purposes. That's an analogy that would work for me - not so sure about google. best, Heather Morrison On 20-Aug-12, at 2:22 PM, Eric F. Van de Velde wrote: > Heather: > This seems to me to be a case of being overly sensitive to problems > that might occur. This is a far-fetched scenario with an extremely > small probability of occurring. If it should occur, that is what the > judicial system is for. They can sort it out, based on real facts of > real cases. There is no need to figure out pre-emptive solutions to > imaginary problems. > > This blog by a law-professor on the early history of Gmail carries > an important lesson to keep in mind: > http://www.volokh.com/2012/08/19/privacys-memory-lane-from-furor-to-fail-in-eight-years/ > --Eric. > > http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com > > Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde > E-mail: [email protected] > > > > On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Heather Morrison <[email protected]> > wrote: > Another question relating to policies requiring CC-BY licenses: will > policy-makers require waiver of liability in the case of derivatives? > > As an example of why this might be necessary: consider the scenario > of a research article in the area of pharmacology. Someone creates a > derivative - but makes a mistake on the dose. People die. > > Before we create and implement policies requiring that all scholars > make their works available for re-use, in my opinion it would be > wise to give considerable thought to whether there are good reasons > why scholars may not always want to (or be able to) allow > derivatives of their works. > > This just one example of a situation where allowing derivatives may > not be clearly beneficial. Others include situations where an author > is using someone else's work and the someone else does not allow > derivatives. It is often the case with book publishing that excerpts > are taken from various places with a variety of rights attached. In > this case, a policy requiring CC-BY places limitations on what an > author can use in their work. > > Note that I am in favor of libre OA, just convinced that this cannot > be achieved by universal adoption of one particular CC license. > > Heather Morrison, MLIS > Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University School of Communication > http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/ > The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
