Re: [SSP-L] copyright protection paper

["Sally Morris" <sec-gen@alpsp.org>]

I think you will find that all publishers have special forms for dealing
with Govt employees (the rules are slightly different here in the UK, and
in the US);  the ALPSP 'model' form is intended for use with other
authors, of which there are many

Sally

Sally Morris, Secretary-General
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK

Phone:  01903 871686 Fax:  01903 871457 E-mail:  sec-gen@alpsp.org
ALPSP Website  http://www.alpsp.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samuel Trosow" <strosow@uwo.ca>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>; <ssp@lists.sspnet.org>
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 2:49 PM
Subject: [SSP-L] copyright protection paper

> I think your survey results actually support my argument that individual
> funding agencies are not adequately enforcing the interest that has been
> reserved by the federal government.  Under OMB Circular A-110, (and a
> long list of CFR provisions implementing the circular at the agency
> level)the federal government reserve a "royalty-free, nonexclusive and
> irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for
> Federal purposes, and to authorize others to do so."(further discussed
> in my paper in section I-C-1)
>
> While I am not able to gain access to the full text of the ALPSP study,
> I have read the executive summary as well as the materials at the
> www.surf.nl site to which Sally referred.  These studies confirm that
> for the most part, publishers are seeking (and are obtaining) copyright
> interests from grantee/authors that are in excess of what the
> grantee/authors actually own. How can a grantee/author assign to a
> publisher an exclusive right, when by virtue of the standard federal
> reservation of rights, there is already another party with existing
> rights in the copyright?
>
> As an example, take the ALPSP License (available at
> http://www.alpsp.org/grantli.pdf), which requires the author to grant
> the exclusive reproduction and distribution right to the publisher.
>
> In the first bulleted paragraph, the author grants an exclusive interest
> to the publisher, ("By signing this form, you (the author(s) or other
> copyright owner) agree to grant to us (the publisher)
> the exclusive right both to reproduce and/or distribute your article
> (including the abstract) ourselves throughout the world in printed,
> electronic or any other medium, and in turn to authorise others
> (includingReproduction Rights Organisations such as the Copyright
> Licensing Agency and the Copyright Clearance Center) to do the same.")
>
> I'm not clear how one can grant such an exclusive right when a third
> party has already reserved substantial rights. While non-exclusive,
> these rights are indeed quite substantial.  The government may
> reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes.  In
> addition, it can even authorize others to do these things. This
> reservation very clearly cuts off the ability of the author/grantee to
> convey a full and exclusive interest.
>
> As a practical matter, and this points to the need for some further
> Congressional intervention, the federal government has not enforced this
> right. The reserved right is routinely ignored in the normal course of
> licensing practice between grantee/authors and publishers.
>
> The post-assignment concessions that are made to authors, which you
> point to, are all well and good, but these retainined rights should not
> be confused with the copyright interest itself, which has already been
> given up. Nor do these benefits necessarily filter down to the general
> public outside of the authors' institution as many of the concessions
> are so limited.  We could also flip around some of your bulleted points
> to show the the glass is still quite empty --  that about 65% of
> publishers still disallow authors to post to their own website, about
> 75% per cent still disallow authors to post to the institutional web
> site and about 80% still disallow posts to pre-print servers. We could
> also say that after publication, over 50 per cent disallow posting to
> the author's website, over 70 per cent to the institutional web site and
> over 90 per cent to pre-print servers. And there are still some
> publishers (about 20%)who disallow re-use of the published article
> within the author's academic institution, and almost half disallow the
> author to re-use his or her material within his or her own publications.
>
> Samuel Trosow
> University of Western Ontario