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RE: Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)
- To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>, "T. Scott Plutchak" <TSCOTT@lister2.lhl.uab.edu>
- Subject: RE: Fair use (RE: electronic journals CCC)
- From: "Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>
- Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 18:19:39 EDT
- Reply-To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
- Sender: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> If the "copyright law in itself [n]ever offered very much protection to > copyright holders," and I agree that that is probably true, then I fail to > see how permitting ILL/Document delivery in a license would result in > distribution to "thousands of people with a couple of mouse clicks." It's not a question of permitting or not permitting ILL -- I don't agree that licenses should forbid ILL entirely. My argument is that publishers are justified in restricting ILL to paper printouts of online articles, because electronic distribution is so easy. This is just common sense: if you mail me a photocopy, I can read it myself and maybe pass it around to my colleagues. If you e-mail me an article, I can literally distribute it to several thousand people within seconds. I think it's silly at best, and disingenuous at worst, for librarians to deny that this poses a valid problem for publishers. > Surely the wording of the license clause could be tailored to allow > ILL the way libraries have always done, without encouraging the kind > of "systematic" distribution you are talking about. If what you mean by "the way libraries have always done" is "in physical formats," then that sort of wording is what I find reasonable. I also think it's great when publishers allow ILL via electronic means. But I understand when they don't. > When it comes to restriction of access and authentication technology, > don't publishers/aggregators (at least in academic libraries) actually > have more control over who reads their material than when it was simply > available in print to anyone who walked into the library? Absolutely not. They may have control over who gets to their content initially, but unless a contract governs what the user can do with the content afterwards, they have no control whatsoever over what happens after that. Bear in mind that I'm not arguing against ILL, or in favor of excessively restrictive license terms, or defending greedy or unscrupulous publishers. I'm saying that it's silly to expect publishers to regard fair use limitations as serious copyright protection in the electronic realm, and that they're justified in some of the restrictions (in particular, those on electronic redistribution) that they put in their licenses. ------------- Rick Anderson Electronic Resources/Serials Coordinator The University Libraries University of Nevada, Reno 1664 No. Virginia St. Reno, NV 89557 PH (775) 784-6500 x273 FX (775) 784-1328 rickand@unr.edu "A revolution involves a change in structure; a change in style is not a revolution." -- Karl Marx
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