Re: A thought about H.R. 2281

["anthony.watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@BTinternet.com>]

Chuck Hamaker writes - have you asked authors if they have been
compensated for the articles they have written by tenure and promotion? I
have never asked that question in that form but in over twenty five years
in publishing I have never met an academic author of an article who asked
to be paid. They may be wrong but that is how it is - upsetting to him
though it may be. I looked him up on AltaVista to see what he wrote. There
were 300 citations - mostly to the same outpourings admittedly. Does he
get paid? Has he ever been promoted and were his publications taken into
account? 

Anthony Watkinson
-----Original Message-----
From: Hamaker, Chuck <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu' <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Date: 25 June 1998 05:43
Subject: RE: A thought about H.R. 2281


>This particular argument, that scholars don't need to get paid for
>articles they write since they get tenure, is really amazing.
>
>We could just as easily argue that publishers don't need to get paid for
>articles delivered by document delivery services, since they already got
>paid the first time they published the article.
>
>Telling a producer of something that "someone else, sometime, if you have
>faith in the system"  will pay you for what you are giving me, isn't
>economics, it's magic!
>
>So, now we have publishers talking about "magic" as justification for not
>paying authors, nor permitting them any say in how the work they create is
>distributed past the first publication.
>
>I think we've hit a tender point, when rational producers talk with
>romanticism about where there product comes from.  Have you asked authors
>if they think they are compensated for their intellectual product through
>tenure and promotion?
>
>P.S. Pat Schroeder, at NASIG last week made the same argument.
>
>Self-serving is the nicest thing I can say about a position that says
>scholars should be in there making sure fair use disappears in the
>electronic environment, so publishers can exercise more control over the
>sweat of their brow because someday somewhere, they might get recompensed
>by somebody else.  hocus pocus.
>
>Chuck Hamaker