Re: Fair-Use/Schmair-Use...

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 06:31:27 -0500

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 3:48 AM, Charles Oppenheim
<C.Oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk> wrote (in JISC-REPOSITORIES):

      Arthur [Sale] is wrong on his final point.  When an
      author assigns copyright to a publisher, the author gives
      away all rights.  It is equivalent to selling your house,
      your car or anything else.  Once you've sold it, you've
      no right to enjoy it's use any more, even though you were
      the previous owner.

      So when an author assigns copyright to a publisher, he or
      she has no rights to keep a back up copy, store it in a
      repository, etc., UNLESS the publisher graciously gives
      permission for the author to do so.  But what the
      publisher cannot do is demand deletion, etc., of earlier
      drafts of the manuscript, because the author has only
      assigned the final accepted version to the publisher.


With all due respect, if this were true, then the author could not
keep and store a paper copy of the final draft of his book in his
attic either (or, for that matter, his author's copy of the published
book). And, as we all know, "earlier drafts" are a slippery slope.
The "penult," which is the refereed draft minus the copy-editing is
an earlier draft. So is an author's draft incorporating corrections.

No, the new medium has features that cannot be coherently, let alone
confidently described, let alone prescribed and proscribed, in this
papyrocentric way. The self-archiving computer scientist (since the
80's) and physicist (since the '90s) authors had it right: "Don't
ask, Don't Tell, Don't Fret, Just Do." Otherwise you will elicit a
welter of inconsistent, and in many cases incoherent opinion and
counter-opinion whilst you languish in a chronic state of Zeno's
Paralysis (as 85% of us foolishly persist in doing, for nigh on two
decades now).

And while I'm in the pulpit, let me also point out that the main
reason for deposit mandates is not to force research authors to do
something they don't really want to do (a few extra bureaucratic
keystrokes, as some of the stalwart defenders of "academic freedom"
seem to imagine), for they all want to maximise the usage and impact
of their research (as a half-century of keystrokes fulfilling
reprint-requests proves): It is to free these special authors from
the irrational inhibitions that keep them in their state of Zeno's
Paralysis.

Apologies for this interruption. Please return to your solemn
discussion of angels, heads and pins...

Stevan Harnad


      Charles


On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:01:59 +1100
 Arthur Sale <ahjs_at_OZEMAIL.COM.AU> wrote:
      Talat



      Let me assure you that you should credit that a
      court would accept a case
      that repositories fulfil other functions. Indeed in
      Australia we could argue
      that they are required by the Federal Government
      for the purpose of
      institutional publication reporting and research
      evaluation. Tasmanian law
      requires the university to keep records for
      long-term preservation under the
      Archives Act and so do most States.



      The other point you miss is that publishers have no
      rights to prohibit a
      restricted copy being mounted in a repository. If
      an author chooses to keep
      a copy of his or her article in one computer system
      or another (or is
      required to place a copy in a particular one) is of
      no concern whatsoever to
      a publisher. They might as well demand that the
      author delete the manuscript
      from their personal PC once it has been published!
      Indeed my departmental
      backup system makes regular copies from my PC
      somewhere and I don't bother
      enquiring where, nor does any publisher of my work.
      Neither do they demand
      that a particular filing cabinet be used for any
      paper drafts. None of this
      is of any concern to a publisher.



      You and I have had this argument before and you
      persist in this view, but it
      cannot go unchallenged if you keep making it. It
      does not stand up to
      examination.



      Arthur Sale

      University of Tasmania
Received on Sat Feb 14 2009 - 11:32:23 GMT

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