STM April white paper comments

[Peter Graham <psgraham@syr.edu>]

On July 9 Ann Okerson passed on to Liblicense-l the April, 1999 White
Paper, "Publisher/Library Relationships in the Digital Environment",
prepared by John E. Cox for STM, the International Association of
Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.  I got to reading it this
week and thought I would provide a few comments here.

Early in the document it speaks of the need of librarians and publishers
to work as partners rather than opponents.  However I believe the
document proposes major changes in the way libraries and their clients
conduct their work with no substantive changes in the way publishers
operate.  That is, the paper proposes creating a "new balance of
interests...supplemented if necessary by amending legislation" to assure
the rights of publishers, which are seen as primarily economic and not
to be disturbed.  This is not a partnership to further scholarly
communication, but a rounding of the wagons around publisher income.

This is made most clear near the conclusion in the paragraph "Publisher
Issues".  The document indicates that  the first two of the four issues
are primarily of concern to publishers; they articulate the "need to
ensure adequate compensation on investments...." and the need of
publishers "to create a viable market for their electronic
publications."  A partnership in furthering scholarly communication will
question these two issues along with all the others that arise in the
radical changes in technology (unmentioned in the White Paper),
including who should benefit from copyright, how and whether  editorial
functions add value to scholarly publication, and whether learned
societies need to consider their evolution as publishing agents and how
that will affect their incomes and missions.  If publisher profit is set
off limits in the discussion, the partnership must founder at the
beginning.

Some other points:

The document is insistent on the need for legal remedies and changes.
It asserts ("Balancing the interests...") that new legislation should be
developed after consensus is reached between relevant communities.  The
same page indicates that whatever consensus is reached it must be
legally enforceable, and follows that with some praise of the "existing
and proven legal framework of copyright, supplemented if necessary by
amending legislation."  The library community view has fairly
consistently been that the existing balance of rights and
responsibilities has served us well and can and should be extended into
the future.  If amending legislation is needed it may be to take account
of specific cases, but the existing balance needs little change or help
from law.

The White Paper asserts firmly that "the interests of publishers and
librarians need to be re-balanced in order to seize the benefits of
digital information flow."  The statement leaves open who is to seize
what; since the STM complaint is that "piracy of printed copyright works
is already a serious problem [?]; their availability in digital form
makes piracy easier", it is clear that what needs to be seized in a
rebalancing is further publisher rights.

It should be noted that the paper asserts the value of the European
database directives, now serving as a model for Congressional
legislation in the USA which would be highly restrictive of information
flow.  In doing so, by the way, it makes the unsubstantiated claim that
the adoption of the the Directive in Europe is a cause of growth of the
European software market, whereas it is far more likely that the general
explosion of technological development is much more responsible.

"Wide exemptions under fair use or library privilege have the potential
to undermine the development of new models...." is a very sweeping
statement.  It implies that fair use has been abused in the electronic
environment by libraries and their clients,  further suggests that fair
use itself is an abuse, and finally it suggests that there are no
remedies at present for the abuse of fair use.  The first is
unsubstantiated, the second is a disagreement, and the third is not
true.

The document suggests that what publishers do in adding value "is not
unlike what construction firms do in building a house: they collect the
materials required...and apply skill and effort to transform them into a
home for which we are willing to pay."  I would suggest that the analogy
may apply rather differently in the model STM proposes:  the materials
will be collected and transformed by scholars and editors.  The
publishers may stand rather in the role of real estate brokers:
constraining a market to use their services, while adding a substantial
cost to the process which would not be necessary if they were not
present.

It's clear from my extension of this analogy, and from the previous
discussion, that STM and some of us in the library community are
starting from different points:  we diverge on the economic protection
necessary for publishers.  If STM is willing to start from the
assumption that it is scholarly communication that is at the heart of
our relationship, not the economic protection of publishers, then a very
fruitful partnership might be possible.  --pg

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