Re: Posting Electronic Copies of Papers published by our Institute

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@worldnet.att.net>]

You can't tell from the information you have provided.  There are no
blanket contracts.  I know that some people will tell you that this is the
morally right thing to do, so go ahead and do it (like smoking pot,
presumably), or that such use is covered by "fair use" provisions of
copyright law (I am not a lawyer, but my lay opinion is that this would be
a stretch).  If I were the official in charge, I would not take this risk.  
And the risks are greater than getting sued and losing (more a problem of
staff time than money, but it would cost something) or getting sued and
winning (still lots of staff time).  The risk is of the "King Lear
category."  That is, once you abdicate your responsibilities, what other
forces do you unleash?  In my opinion, this is a leadership issue, not a
legal one.

Please send the hate mail that invariably results from a posting like this
to my Hotmail account, along with the penis-enhancement spams and
intriguing offers for Nigerian securities:  metastory@hotmail.com.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jennifer Vigil" <jvigil@burnham.org>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 7:29 PM
Subject: Posting Electronic Copies of Papers published by our Institute

> I'm in bit of a time crunch and am trying to find something in writing
> that either states Yes or No to the following question:
>
> Our president would like to maintain a database of papers published by
> authors at our Institute. He would like to post PDFs of all articles
> published and have them available internally on our intranet.  We do have
> the Electronic Amendment from CCC which might cover papers that are
> published in journals to which we have an electronic subscription, but for
> papers published in journals to which we don't subscribe hasn't the author
> signed over copyright? I don't think this is legal unless the author
> obtains permission from the publisher each time they publish a paper,
> however I'm trying to find something in writing that states this.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Jennifer Vigil
> jvigil@burnham.org