RE: Call for input on digital rights management

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

ALL USE IS FAIR USE!

This should be the starting point for discussions about rights management.
Ultimately, science needs universal open access to research results. ALL
use being fair use. That is the requirement of the academic community, and
no amount of watering down of DRM regulations or standards will bring us
nearer to that situation.

Impossible?

Not at all. But it requires a change of the way in which science
communication is carried out. If research articles were peer-reviewed
(habitually done by the scientific community for free) and upon
acceptance, journals would be paid to publish those articles, copyright
transfer to the journals would not be necessary at all and all use of the
material would be free and fair use as long as the material would retain
its integrity and is not misappropriated (the author's moral rights).
Copyright and its management is a red herring in that model. The benefit
for the author is phenomenally increased visibility, and if done on any
reasonable scale, the incalculable benefits to the academic community as a
whole are fast, convenient, open, unfettered access to research results
(and a whole lot cheaper than the conventional model to boot).

There are a few initiatives working along the lines sketched. BioMed
Central (www.biomedcentral.com) is one, in the life sciences and medicine,
as the name suggests. But there are far too few such initiatives to date,
and even BioMed Central, the largest of them in the life sciences, hasn't
reached anywhere near sufficient scale yet. The academic community could
do a lot worse than focussing their efforts on bypassing the whole rights
management issue for research publications by intensely advocating open
access models, instead of trying, probably in vain, to influence the
strong DRM lobby.

All use is fair use. At least for research published by BioMed Central.

Jan Velterop
Publisher BioMed Central


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ann Okerson [mailto:ann.okerson@yale.edu]
> Sent: 09 July 2002 22:22
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Call for input on digital rights management
>
>
> This thread on diglib may be of interest to many readers of
> liblicense-l.
> If this topic interests you, please make your views known to members
> of the working party.  With thanks to Patrick Durusau  and
> Robin Cover.

[SNIP]