Fwd: RE: Peggy Hoon on licenses

["Selden Lamoureux" <selden_lamoureux@ncsu.edu>]

Peggy's point that licensing hasn't noticeably improved is well 
taken.  Here's the rub, there will NEVER be a universal solution 
to licensing because it rests on contract law, and there is no 
universal contract law.  There may be an improved model license, 
or an updated library-centric standard license, but there will 
not be a universal license.  Libraries, certainly, wouldn't be 
able to agree on one because libraries are constrained by 
regulations imposed at the state, university, and library level 
as soon as a license is involved.  (And, I might add, regulations 
idiosyncratically interpreted and codified into local 
guidelines.)

There are also no universal business models, no universal 
purchase orders -- but SERU, which points to copyright law and 
provides guidelines about expected behaviors not covered by 
copyright, is one end run around the absurdities of negotiating 
licenses.  It's true, I have occasionally needed to negotiate 
absurdities in the purchase order when using SERU, but I still 
came out ahead because I avoided all the objectionable contract 
boilerplate (some of which Peggy highlights in her blog: 
indemnification; right to alter terms without mutual consent; 
confidentiality).  The majority of instances where I've used 
SERU, however, involved no arduous re-framing of elaborate 
purchase orders.  Simple, direct, easy, fast characterize the 
majority of the SERU purchases I've done.

I'm not suggesting we don't need model licenses, I think we do; 
but we also need alternatives to licenses, not just better 
licenses.

Selden Durgom Lamoureux
Electronic Resources Librarian
North Carolina State University Libraries
Raleigh, NC 27695-7111
email:  selden_lamoureux@ncsu.edu