RE: Bethesda and copyright (RE: OA and copyright -- Andy Gass quote in LJ News Wire)

[Jan Velterop <velterop@biomedcentral.com>]

Rick,

I didn't intend to play wordgames. That's for lawyers and I ain't one. I
apologise if that is the impression I gave.

You wrote earlier of an author who publishes with Open Access that "...she
fully abdicates her *exclusive* rights to copy and to distribute the
article. She probably also effectively gives up the *exclusive* right to
display it publicly." (My emphasis.)

I accept that that maybe so. But in an Open Access context it means that
the world benefits from that, as she does herself.

In the traditional context, the usual transfer of copyright to the
publisher means that "She fully abdicates her rights to copy and to
distribute the article. She also gives up the right to display it
publicly." I don't have to spell out who benefits, I guess.

We probably agree which is better, no?

Jan Velterop
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Sent: 09 July 2004 13:05
> To: Jan Velterop; liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Bethesda and copyright (RE: OA and copyright -- Andy Gass quote
> in LJ News Wire)
> 
> 
>> She doesn't. The copyright holder is the only one who can exercise her 
>> right to make her work truly open access (i.e. enlist the help of 
>> anybody willing to copy and distribute the article further). She does 
>> this because it is in her interest to do so. This is *using* her 
>> exclusive right; not 'abdicating' it.
> 
> No.  If the author grants her exclusive rights to the world at large 
> then she has, by definition, given away her exclusive rights.  You can 
> call that "using" rather than "abdicating" if you want (or call it 
> "enlisting the help of others"), but that's little more than wordplay -- 
> the fact is that if I start out with an exclusive right to distribute a 
> piece of my writing, and I then grant "all users a free, irrevocable, 
> worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, 
> distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and 
> distribute derivative works," then I have "used" my exclusive rights 
> only in the sense that I was the one who had the right to give them 
> away. They were mine exclusively, and now they are the world's.
> 
> I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing that -- obviously,
> authors should feel free to make their work as freely available as they
> wish.  But let's not play word games.  An author who publishes according
> to the Bethesda Principles does not retain any meaningful copyright 
> over her work.
> 
> Rick Anderson
> rickand@unr.edu