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Re: liability language 

We have run into this problem with a license.  The original wording in the
license was, "Licensee is required to notify its Authorized Users of these
prohibited uses and will be responsible for any prohibited uses by
Authorized Users." 

We felt that this put us in the position of being legally responsible for
the actions of any of our patrons.  In an academic institution with work
stations available not only to our staff and students but also the public,
this simply would not work.  In our case the publisher proposed language
stating that we would notify the publisher of any violations that we
became aware of and would cooperate with the publisher in investigations
of infringements. 

This language was still a bit more than what you are suggesting.  We saw
ourselves becoming a sort of license and copyright police.  I think we
would have been happier with language such as you propose as this would
have allowed us to correct a problem without requiring an open ended
obligation to possibly be involved in a legal situation. 

I am very interested in how other libraries are handling this kind of
language.  What is a reasonable amount of responsibility that we can take
for the actions of our patrons?  In our case the negotiation broke down
and we decided not to provide the online version of this journal to our
patrons. 

Christine Ernst Taft
Dykes Library
University of Kansas Medical Center
ctaft@kumc.edu

>>> Kimberly Parker <kimberly.parker@yale.edu> 01/06 6:10 PM >>>
I recently ran across a license that provided a list of appropriate uses
of the data and included a sentence that said that the Institution signee
was liable for any violations of these appropriate uses by the Authorized
Users (previously defined in the contract). 

I have several questions for the list. 

Has anyone else run across this contract language and signed it? 

Is there a difference of feeling on such language between corporate
institutions who might be expected to more closely control the behavior of
their employees and academic institutions? 

And for information providers, can there be appropriate substitutions for
such language?  In this particular instance we proposed alternate language
such that we (the Institution) would work with the information provider to
identify and correct any violations.  This was not accepted by the
provider. 

I see a shadowy parallel here to court cases where an internet service
provider was sued for the use to which their service was put. 

Anyone care to comment or answer one or more of the above questions?


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