Re: Librarian "terrorists" and the AAP

[David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>]

I notice that in Judy Platt's letter she (quite properly) deprecates the
position

> that no one--neither a  publisher nor an author, nor anyone else should
> be able to encrypt copyrighted material to protect it from unauthorized
> use and reproduction, 

and later refers to

> the legitimate copyright interests of authors and publishers.

>From this, it appears that she is of the opinion that electronic text is
protected under the Copyright law, and not under more restrictive
contractual provisions. Many librarians, including myself, feel that this
should be the case, but I have not recently heard it expressed by a
publisher. I am glad that she, and presumably those she represents, now
considers the provisions of ordinary copyright sufficient protection, and
that its Fair Use provisions apply to electronic versions as well. No
librarian asks for more.

Perhaps publishers will now revise their contracts to acknowledge this, if
indeed they even continue to feel the need for special contracts for
electronic versions of printed material, since the Copyright Act has
served their interest well in print will do so equally well in electronic
formats

>    Part 1.1Type: Plain Text (text/plain)

-- 
David Goodman
Biology Librarian 
and Digital Resources Researcher
Princeton University Library
Princeton, NJ 08544-0001
phone: 609-258-3235
fax: 609-258-2627
e-mail: dgoodman@princeton.edu