RE: Peggy Hoon on licenses

["John Cox" <John.E.Cox@btinternet.com>]

The model licences that can be found at www.licensingmodels.org 
are designed to deal with just the sorts of questions Peggy Hoon 
and others have raised. They provide a template for the 
incorporation of all the business terms that are agreed between 
the publisher and the library or library consortium. There are 
different versions of the licence template for single academic 
institutions, consortia, public libraries, corporate and special 
libraries and for e-books.  They were originally created over ten 
years ago, and were last revised in 2009.

What these templates cannot do is dictate a set of standard 
conditions governing usage rights and other terms and conditions. 
Publishers cannot confer about conditions, as this would amount 
to collusion in breach of anti-trust law (or competition law in 
Europe). I know, because I wrote them, and continue to be their 
custodian. And these model licences are for free!

What libraries can do, as NERL has done, is to create their own 
model licence and make it a condition of purchasing the 
publisher's products. Inevitably, that would mean that the 
library has to be prepared to cancel the licence if the publisher 
will not accept that.  That is hard for a library to do.

With regard to those publishers that still seek to impose 
unworkable conditions on libraries, there is a continuing need to 
educate publishers about what rights libraries and their users 
need to be able to do their jobs properly.

John Cox

Managing Director
John Cox Associates Ltd
Rookwood, Bradden
Towcester, Northamptonshire
NN12 8ED
United Kingdom
E-mail: John.E.Cox@btinternet.com
Web: www.johncoxassociates.com

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Kurtz
Sent: 04 March 2011 00:22
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Peggy Hoon on licenses

A number of model licenses have what appear to me a very clear 
definition of Commercial Use (BioOne has adopted this 
definition). This, from licensingmodels.org's Consortial License, 
is a good example:

Commercial Use Use for the purposes of monetary reward (whether 
by or for the Consortium or a Member or an Authorized User) by 
means of sale, resale, loan, transfer, hire or other form of 
exploitation of the Licensed Materials. Neither recovery of 
direct costs by the Consortium or any Member from Authorized 
Users, nor use by the Consortium or a Member or by an Authorized 
User of the Licensed Materials in the course of research funded 
by a commercial organization, is deemed to be Commercial Use.

Mark Kurtz  |  Director of Business Development  |  BioOne
21 Dupont Circle Suite 800  |  Washington, DC  20036
Phone 202.296.1605 ext. 5  |  Fax 202.872.0884  |  Cell
617.669.4276
mkurtz@arl.org
www.BioOne.org

On Mar 2, 2011, at 5:54 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote:

> While I agree about the general utility of CC licenses, I wish 
> someone could explain to me what the difference between 
> "commercial" and "noncommercial" use is. The CC itself 
> conducted a survey a couple of years ago and found little 
> consensus beyond a very small core of shared understanding of 
> what the distinction connotes. This is not just a philosophical 
> concern, since very real practical consequences depend on 
> knowing the difference as it applies to various publishing 
> ventures.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>> The best licensing in existence for scholarly communication, 
>> IMHO, is CC licensing, as this simplifies understanding of how 
>> materials can be used. CC licenses are used by 
>> subscriptions-based as well as open access publishers. Of 
>> course, this does not help when we are licensing resources 
>> from vendors / publishers who do not use CC licenses. The 
>> reason that I bring this up is because all of us who work with 
>> vendors at any level can play a useful role in helping them to 
>> understand the current and evolving needs of scholarship, so 
>> that they can develop practices which will help them to 
>> survive and thrive into the future.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> Heather G. Morrison
>> Project Coordinator
>> BC Electronic Library Network