RE: author's rights

[Judy Luther <jluther@earthlink.net>]

Bernie:

You raise an excellent point about author's retaining the copyright which
is distinct from the issue of their work being made available in
electronic form.  I found Barbara Quint's article in Information Today
helpful in distinguishing the two issues for me.

Author's retained copyright.

These are free lance authors who claim they did not grant copyright to the
publisher and therefore are not being fairly compensated.  I find it
interesting that it was the authors who sued CARL and not the publishers
who are compensated by the CCC.  I am unclear as to the role of The
National Writers Union author's registry and the CCC in providing an
efficient mechanism to support freelance authors.  Perhaps another
contributor to this list can enlighten us.

Retained in electronic form

Efficiently storing the article in electronic form for resale once it is
scanned, is a peripheral issue for CARL in this case.  I believe there are
legal constraints around storing (electronic) copies for commercial use.  
A recent case, Tasini v. NY Times, is being appealed since the courts
decided that the NY Times as the publisher had the right to include the
authors works in an electronic version in addition to a print version.
This relates to the publisher's negotiation to produce an author's work in
multiple formats.

If the CARL case stands, I would expect it to impact both the publishers
who negotiate authors rights and the aggregators (such as IAC and UMI) who
provide article level access.  Increased electronic access to the contents
of journals is driving the consumption at the article level.  Given the
demand, I would expect that a system will be developed, adapted or
expanded to efficiently handle authors' compensation.  The question is -
what happens while this is being resolved.

Judy

Judy Luther, MLS, MBA
Informed Strategies 					610-645-7546 tel
102 West Montgomery Ave. #B				610-645-5251 fax
Ardmore PA  19003					jluther@earthlink.net


-----Original Message-----
From:	Sloan, Bernie [SMTP:bernies@uillinois.edu]
Sent:	Friday, October 23, 1998 3:25 PM
To:	'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject:	

Just out of curiousity, what, if any, implications does a case like this
have for other methods of "reselling" journal articles electronically?

I realize that what UnCover does is different from what an IAC or a UMI
offers via their full text article databases, or what individual
publishers do when they offer electronic versions of their journals.

I am just curious about the potential impacts of "authors rights" issues
on the electronic packaging and re-packaging of journal articles.

Bernie Sloan