Re: American Statistical Association license terms

[David Goodman <dgoodman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>]

Catchword cannot offer you rights that it has not acquired from the
publisher, so it might depend on Catchword's contract with them.  But,
though not a lawyer, I would interpret Catchword's conditions as a
guarantee that all the publishers whose products it offers accept the
terms under which it provides their content.

I do not see a problem with the Catchword language you mention, in view of
the full sentence, which reads: "The subscribing institution is
responsible for any access to the journals through its IP address or proxy
server within that IP address, and will use its best endeavours to prevent
unauthorised use, including making all reasonable efforts to inform
authorised users of these guidelines."

Making our "best endeavours" and "all reasonable efforts" seems what we
can appropriately agree to do.

 David Goodman,
 Research Librarian and
 Biological Sciences Bibliographer
 Princeton University Library
 dgoodman@princeton.edu            609-258-7785

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Kimberly Parker wrote:

> I wanted to share a piece of information which may (or may not!) be at all
> useful in dealing with this particular problem.  Since these ASA journals
> are available from Catchword, and I know Catchword has general terms of
> use for all the materials available from their service, I went and dug out
> the Catchword Use Guidelines url:
> <http://www.catchword.com/guidelines.htm>
>
> There is a statement right near the top that says: "The journals on
> CatchWord's system are published by a number of different publishers as
> indicated in our title list. These guidelines are intended to cover all of
> the journals on the system. Any variations to these guidelines should be
> negotiated directly with each publisher concerned."
>
> This says to me that you might be able to use the ASA journal on Catchword
> and argue that the ASA terms of use don't apply *as long as you find the
> Catchword Use Guidelines acceptable*.
>
> I highlight that last point because since the last time I looked at the
> Catchword terms of use and the present, a phrase (which I either didn't
> notice or didn't exist before) has appeared in the Guidelines to the
> effect of "the subscribing institution is responsible for any access to
> the journals through its IP address or proxy server within that IP
> address".
>
> I'm now choking on that particular point and searching frantically to see
> if I printed off a copy of the Guidelines from when I first read and
> approved them.
>
> (The other interesting aspect of this is what happens when you have two
> licenses of manifest assent that appear to be in conflict.  The Catchword
> thing says it is all you need to worry about.  The ASA thing says it
> applies -- what would a judge say?  Who know!)
>
> FWIW.
>
> --Kimberly Parker