RE: Supreme Court Ruling--Copyright--New York Times v. Tasini

["Peter V. Picerno" <ppicerno@utmem.edu>]

Don't kid yourself that libraries are a captive market ... declining
budgets plus increased awareness of such things as "good excuses" may
force libraries to cancel what had been previously regarded as 'must have'
information. Look at what the music libraries have done with regard to
Shawann's online catalog and how science libraries dealt with Nature.
These may be only small ripples, but of necessity, these ripples may grow.
For example, it would be much easier to get a print subscription to a
journal or newspaper (such as NY Times or Time) -- with all its attendant
problems -- rather than to face a most costly and possibly incomplete
electronic version.

I don't think that anyone in the library world begrudges publishers making
a fair profit -- after all, it's to a library's advantage to be able to
get information in a convenient cost-effective manner. When, however, the
'owners' of that information begin to create a price crisis of their own
accord, then other sources spring up to fill in the possible gap in
cost-effective information. The SPARC initiative comes to mind, for
example.

You will see from the news release from Tasini that freelance authors also
may be forced to explore other venues for the distribution of their
information.

Capitalism, which works best with a monopoly-share of the market, may not
work for the retention and distribution of information. The jury -- the
real jury, i.e., libraries -- is still out regarding the results of the
Supreme Court decision.

Peter Picerno

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu]On Behalf Of John Webb
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 7:29 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Supreme Court Ruling--Copyright--New York Times v. Tasini


Hmm, I try not to have knee-jerk reactions, but when I feel one coming on, I
try to run outside the hospital zone and scream, anonymously.  I may have
missed this one, who knows.  And I'm a capitalist through and through: I
love to wheel and deal.  Two of my best boyhood friends eventually owned big
used-car businesses.

I think I was using "excuse" colloquially.  Even an informed buyer rarely
knows all of the costs that enter into a seller's price.  The science serial
price increase crisis taught us all about the impacts of currency exchange
rates, the cost of paper, and increased page counts.  When normal inflation
dropped out of the running as a factor, the good capitalists among us also
understood management's understandable desire to maximize shareholder equity
in a booming market and the ability of growing and secure cash flows to
secure the building of conglomerates.  But I think that only a truly
dedicated non-cynic would overlook the publishers' "opportunity costs":
libraries are a captive market, and the publishers had a whole menu of real
costs from which to draw to explain--or excuse--otherwise exhorbinant price
increases.

As you note, publishers and aggregators will incur increased costs to cover
their past transgressions.  We have no idea how any vendor will spread the
costs.  But if I were a vendor, I'd be tempted to raise prices as much as
the market would bear.  If that happened to exceed the costs, then Tasini
would be a wonderful excuse.  If not, then it's just a good excuse.

John Webb
Assistant Director for Collections and Systems
Washington State University Libraries
Pullman, WA 99164-5610
jwebb@wsu.edu
509-335-9133    FAX 509-335-6721

_____

At 06:55 AM 6/26/01 EDT, you wrote:
>
>Aggregators have contracts with publishers. If publishers do not have the
>rights to license downstream, aggregators will have to remove the content
>from their databases which will become less useful to their customers. I
>cannot see that they will be able to ask for more. It will make their
>product less attractive and will handicap their business.
>
>If publishers want to get the rights they may have to pay more but,
>leaving aside the payments, there will be a huge bureaucratic workload to
>accomplish a complete rights coverage. That costs money. Some extra costs
>will get passed on to the customer even if some can be absorbed.
>
>I am interested to learn what John Webb means by the word "excuse". Is
>this a philosophical critique of capitalism or just a knee-jerk reaction
>to a situation which is not going to help information providers at all
>(either publishers or librarians or aggregators) however fair and
>reasonable the judgement may have been
>
>Anthony Watkinson