RE: copyright protection paper

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Part of the issue is govt. employee authored papers are generally
"incognito" i.e. there is NO way to tell in a journal that the publisher
doesn't hold the copyright. Every few years I check to see if you can tell
from the article if it is government employee only produced, and what the
publisher notes on copyright. Normally the publishers' insert their own
copyright notice and that's about all. If you don't know, you don't know.

My guess is that CCC etc.  has collected lots of dollars for material
publishers didn't own the right to demand payment for. NO ILL system, for
example, indicates whether an item is fee or not based on who the authors
are, we just assume from the journal title.

So I don't see that Sally's point means much as a "challenge" if its free
or restricted, but the publisher doesn't tell you which is which and mix
it in with what is publisher owned--How could an individual or instituion
possibly know their use rights are different.

We probably need some other way to know what is NOT under copyright. A
standard note on journal articles? ( since the right is obscured right
now)

How much money does the publishing industry owe back to libraries for
unlawfully collecting copright fees on government owned materials??

That should make an interesting court case, since the big publishers I've
talked to do not track on an article basis what they are collecting in
copyright fees for journal articles.

Chuck Hamaker

-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Okerson [mailto:ann.okerson@yale.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 7:48 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: copyright protection paper

There's something odd about the findings that have been described in
recent messages, in that publishers -- at least US publishers are all
perfectly aware of the Copyright Act's Secion 105 (government works on
government time, etc.) and do have appropriate forms for these works.  I
am sure that compliance is around 100%.  Perhaps neither study (Romeo or
Cox)  specifically intended to cover that kind of situation.

Furthermore, the reported percentage of publishers permitting posting of
an author's work on the web and/or other rights, seems to me lower than
real-life experience suggests.  Most publishers will - often unasked but
sometimes one needs to ask -- permit posting to web sites and also broad
re-use by the author in various ways.  Authors probably do not not have
all the rights we would ideally like, but the progress/change in the right
direction has been truly significant over the past 5-10 years.

As to Sally Morris's question below, it is the right one.  When publishers
accept articles, they add value and readers, whether of government-funded
or private works, are paying for that value-added.  Thus, just because an
article is freely available, doesn't necessarily mean it is or will be
available for free.  Increasingly, readers (libraries) will be affirming
that the value added is high, when they choose to pay to subscribe to a
journal.

Ann Okerson/Yale Library
ann.okerson@yale.edu