RE: PsycArticles License

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

At the risk of reigniting an old argument:

> The only possible
> reason for greater restrictions on ILL from e-journals than print was the
> possibility of the copies multiplying due to the ease of reproduction.
> Since a print article can be scanned and then multiplied similarly, this
> distinction is obsolete.

Not true.  Send me an article as an e-mail attachment, and I can forward
it to several thousand people in a matter of five mouseclicks and ten
seconds. Fax or snail-mail the article to me and I'd have to go to the
considerably greater effort of scanning, formatting and saving each page
first.  That's more than enough effort to prevent casual or accidental
wholesale redistribution.  No, it won't stop someone who is determined and
highly motivated.  But the question isn't whether print-only ILL policies
are failsafe; the question is whether they erect a reasonable barrier that
makes piracy less likely.  We can argue about whether they do those
things, but let's not pretend that the mass redistribution of print is as
easy as the mass forwarding of e-mail.

> What prevents copies being re-published in the
> electronic era is the law abiding nature of librarians, who, if anything,
> are too over-cautious to make full use of the rights they do have.  I know
> of no case where academic librarians have ever deliberately and
> systematically violated copyright on a substantial scale for any material,
> print or electronic, for text or other media.

Publishers are not, I believe, worried that librarians are going to widely
redistribute their materials.  They're worried that end users will.  By no
means is this a foolish worry, especially if the end user is a
Napster-minded undergrad who equates intellectual property with fascism.

-------------
Rick Anderson
Director of Resource Acquisition
The University Libraries
University of Nevada, Reno        "The only thing worse than a
1664 No. Virginia St.              silly politician analyzing
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rickand@unr.edu