RE: Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)

[Tom Williams <twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu>]

I agree with Paul on this one.  In some ways the E full text offers better
protection against abuse than some of the print.  For example, here all
users getting on to our electronic resources, including full-text, must
have an authorized login/password.  With print anyone, no matter what the
affiliation, can come in to the library, pull the print and copy whatever
they want and with as many copies as they want.  With E, non authorized
users would not get access and thus, have no opportunity to exploit the
material.  As for our external requestors, they do not have direct access
to our databases unless the license allows for that.  If we provide them
with an article we print the article from the E and then send them the
hard copy.  Our licenses usually do not allow direct E transmission
(although I think this is a silly proviso on the part of the vendors).

Not only does this make it more difficult for anyone to send thousands of
articles with a click of the mouse, it makes it more difficult to even get
at the material to begin with - if they are not authorized users.

Before we instituted our cost-recovery SOUTHmed network to external users,
we regularly had many individuals such as information brokers etc. come in
to make copies of numerous articles to "resell" to their clients.  I'm
certain no provisions were made by these users to pay royalties.  Once we
implemented our network we stopped this practice.  Now we (the librarians)
photocopy all requests, adhering to fair use, contu, etc. and have spent
many thousands in royalty fees to the CCC.  If publishers ever really
study programs such as ours I'm sure they'll see that some of their
outrageous restrictions are most counter productive to themselves.

Tom

-- 
Thomas L. Williams, AHIP
Director, Biomedical Libraries and
 Media Production Services
University of South Alabama
College of Medicine
Mobile, Al 36688-0002
tel. (334)460-6885
fax. (334)460-7638
twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Paul Burry wrote:

> 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