Re: Copyright Protection paper

[Don Taylor <dstaylor@sfu.ca>]

Hello,

I believe the effect of the Sabo bill would be different from the existing
effect of public domain status of US Government works due to the copyright
protection of the work in foreign nations. Signatory nations to
international copyright conventions, particularly the Berne Convention,
agree to "national treatment" - they will protect the nationals of
signatory nations in the same way they protect their own nationals.  In
many nations this has the effect of placing US Government documents under
copyright protection since in many nations government works have copyright
protection. For example, in Canada, works created by the federal
government have copyright protection - consequently all works created by
foreign governments have copyright protection in Canada, including US
Government documents.

However the Sabo bill, if I understand it correctly, requires the
researcher to agree in writing that their work will not be protected by
copyright.  This is different than treating US Government funded research
as US Government publications since the researcher is explicitly agreeing
in each case to waive copyright protection. The lack of copyright
protection now stems from the researcher directly waiving copyright,
rather than from the work simply belonging to a class of works.  In most
countries, if you agree to waive copyright protection, then your work does
not have copyright protection (aside from moral rights, which you can also
waive).  Therefore I'm pretty sure that under the Sabo bill, the
researcher's work will also lack copyright protection in most other
countries - even where government works are under copyright - since the
copyright protection was explicitly waived.

Regards,
Don Taylor


-------------------------------------------------------------
Donald Taylor
Electronic Resources Librarian      email: dstaylor@sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University Library     ph: 604-291-4930
8888 University Drive                    fax: 604-291-3023
Burnaby, BC, Canada  V5A 1S6

***

At 06:35 PM 27/08/2003 -0400, you wrote:
> I do have some comments on your draft paper at
> http://publish.uwo.ca/~strosow/Sabo_Bill_Paper.pdf.
>
> I think it contains some fundamental misunderstandings and unsupported
> assertions:
>
> 1)    Most important -  The expected effect of the Sabo bill, if
> passed. I don't see why it would be any different from the existing
> effect of the public domain status of Government works.  It would be
> valuable to look at the extent to which the public availability of
> these (for example, when published as journal articles) differs in
> reality from that of articles which are not in the public domain.
> Unless someone looks at this and sees a beneficial difference, I can't
> see what Sabo would actually achieve.
>
> 2)    The restricting effect of copyright transfer from author to
> publisher (or indeed anyone else);  not borne out by the facts!
> Copyright ownership really isn't the point - a great many publishers
> commercial as well as not-for-profit) deal with journal authors under
> the terms of agreements which allow the authors to make their articles
> freely available on their own, institutional or subject websites; see
> our recent report, Scholarly Publishing Practice at
> <http://www.alpsp.org/news/sppsummary0603.pdf> - the survey covered
> every major publisher and a fair slice of the small and medium ones
> too.  What is important is not whose name appears on the copyright
> line - this is largely irrelevant - but what rights are held by whom.
> Copyright is not really a single right - it is divisible and this is
> often the most workable approach.  See www.surf.nl/copyright for many
> examples of enlightened publisher policies
>
> 3)    The extent to which DRM technologies actually restrict Fair
> Use/Fair Dealing rights;  many people allege this, but where are the
> facts?  Again, our survey shows the considerable extent to which
> publishers actually permit things like course pack use and inter-
> library loan with their electronic journals.  In any case, Fair
> Use/Fair Dealing, in the physical world, permits certain acts with
> publications to which you already have legitimate access.  It's the
> same in the digital world - these rights do not and should not permit
> anyone to access anything for 'Fair Use/Dealing' purposes;  you might
> as well say it's all right to steal a book from a bookstore because you
> wanted to use it for such purposes, and that locking the door of the
> bookstore at night restricts your rights!
>
> 4)    The usual wild generalisation that journal prices
> are 'skyrocketing'.   Yes, average increases exceed inflation - one
> major driver of this, as everyone understands, is that journals get
> bigger as more articles are produced.   But most publishers -
> especially, but not exclusively, not-for-profits, who are a very
> important part of the picture - keep their prices modest in the first
> instance (more relevant, really, than year-on-year increases per se)
> and increase them as modestly as they can.   The development of new
> ways of selling journals to libraries - collections, consortia
> licences - has also helped to reduce the cost, and many publishers make
> their journals freely available to less developed countries.
>
> Our organisation is not against finding new and better models for the
> ide distribution of scholarly information - quite the opposite.  But
> these developments should be based on facts - which is why we spend
> much of our resources on research.
>
> Sally Morris
> Secretary General, ALPSP