Re: Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)

[David Goldsmith <david_goldsmith@ncsu.edu>]

I believe David's point is correct.  Technically, it is very easy to
distribute content electronically whether it is already in digital format
or not.  This still does not give us the right to be irresponsible, we use
our fair use guidelines to help us make decisions about
obtaining/distributing information for educational and scholarly purposes.
The ability to distribute the materials does not change with the
restrictive licensing terms (not yet,) but the "right" to distribute for
legitimate fair use (i.e. educational and scholarly purposes) will change.
It is only a matter of time when the technology will catch up and the
publishers will be able to tangibly enforce the restrictive terms in the
license.

Here is a scenario of the future, library X signs a license with publisher
Y for electronic access to their journals. Library X intends to keep print
copies and is not successful in negotiating fair use rights for the
electronic product. Library X has a budget crisis and takes the
publisher's 10% reduction in price to cancel the print copy.  Eventually
this may become a more reoccurring practice among many libraries and
publisher Y claims it can no longer support the print version of the
title. Library X never recovers economically and is forced to drop the
electronic package. Library X attempts to subscribe to the print titles of
the core journals, but they are not all available in paper. Faculty Z
starts to demand access to articles and Library X finds that it cannot
find anybody to loan them a copy because the content is all tied up in
licensed deals. Fortunately for Library X, publisher Y now has a pay by
the sip model in place, so faculty Z can have access to the content...


 David Goldsmith
 Collections Librarian for Distance Learning Services
 NCSU Libraries
 North Carolina State University
 Campus Box 7111
 Raleigh, NC 27695-7111
 (919) 513-3653  FAX (919) 515-8264
 david_goldsmith@ncsu.edu


David Goodman wrote:

> Rick, both you and Margaret would be sending only a single article, which
> I do not see should greatly bother a publisher. You will not be sending a
> complete issue of a journal, which I think a publisher could reasonably
> worry about.
>
> There is of course nothing to stop you doing so technically. But if you
> were doing it on that kind of scale it would not be that much harder to
> cut up a printed issue, feed it through a scanner, and convert it to pdfs
> than it would be to do so from an e-journal. I think the publisher would
> rightfully object just as much if you did it from the print.
>
> David Goodman, Princeton University
> Biology Library                          dgoodman@princeton.edu
> 609-258-3235