RE: Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)

[Paul Burry <burry@techbc.ca>]

If the "copyright law in itself [n]ever offered very much protection to
copyright holders," and I agree that that is probably true, then I fail to
see how permitting ILL/Document delivery in a license would result in
distribution to "thousands of people with a couple of mouse clicks."  
Surely the wording of the license clause could be tailored to allow ILL
the way libraries have always done, without encouraging the kind of
"systematic" distribution you are talking about.  Since neither the
copyright law nor a database license can prevent this kind of activity, I
do not agree that publishers are "justified in imposing" the kinds of
restrictions they have been on electronic information.  Something else
(greed) is going on here, in my opinion.

When it comes to restriction of access and authentication technology,
don't publishers/aggregators (at least in academic libraries) actually
have more control over who reads their material than when it was simply
available in print to anyone who walked into the library?  In the case of
electronic reserves, access restriction is often as narrow as allowing
only those enrolled in a particular course to read a particular article.  
Why should this cost [any] more than access to the print version of that
article?

Paul Burry
Information Services Support Specialist
The Portal
Technical University of British Columbia
burry@techbc.ca
(604) 586-6019

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Rick Anderson [mailto:rickand@unr.edu] 
Sent:	Thursday, May 03, 2001 3:20 PM
To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu; T. Scott Plutchak
Subject:	Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)

> As for E vs print.  If it is our duty, as we believe, to provide services
> then our contention is that it should make no difference whether the
> source material is in print or E - fair use, contu, etc. should apply.

Legally, of course, that's still true -- the law doesn't delineate one set
of fair use guidelines for a print publication and another for an
electronic one.  But let's get real here.  The fact is that an electronic
copy poses much more of a threat to copyright integrity than a print copy
does.  It would take a tremendous amount of work to distribute a paper
copy in any kind of wide and systematic way.  Give me an electronic copy,
though, and I can send it to thousands of people with a couple of
mouseclicks.  That's why publishers are, I believe, justified in imposing
license terms that specifically restrict that sort of distribution.  
Frankly, I'm not convinced that copyright law in itself ever offered very
much protection to copyright holders -- it was the ungainliness of print
formats that really kept things in check.  Publishers are not dumb to be
concerned about the possibilities for broad illegal distribution in the
electronic realm.

-------------
Rick Anderson
Electronic Resources/Serials Coordinator
The University Libraries
University of Nevada, Reno
1664 No. Virginia St.
Reno, NV  89557
PH  (775) 784-6500 x273
FX  (775) 784-1328
rickand@unr.edu