Re: Message from Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR's President (LONG)

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

To my mind this is an extremely sensible posting. All licenses are
essentially based on trust. Publishers could put technological measures in
place but they are expensive and do we want them in the area of scholarly
communication? This is not a rhetorical question. There are concerns about
authenticity but as yet they are not big concerns.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Davis" <pmd8@cornell.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 2:24 PM
Subject: RE: Message from Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR's President (LONG)

> Any form of authentication based on a virtual identity has some risk of
> fraud.  Like Rick Anderson states, we need to take "reasonable measures".
> Our first generation Library Gateway was based on user-names and
> passwords.  And while we took "reasonable measures" to keep these accounts
> within the Cornell Community, we were sure that many of them left the
> country.  As long as the publisher is willing to work with their clients
> to reduce the risk of abuse, there doesn't appear to be a good-enough
> argument to revamp our authentication methods, or turn the library into a
> police state.
>
> --Philip Davis
> pmd8@cornell.edu