RE: AAP/PSP Open letter to Dr. Zerhouni (NIH)

["Richard Poynder" <aotg20@dsl.pipex.com>]

> o Copyright: I've wondered how US legislation will be rewritten, as it
> would need to be.  At this point, Section 105 of the US Copyright Act
> declares that the created work of government employees on government
> time is in the public domain.  In this case, Section 105 language will
> need a significant adjustment: (1) either government funded work, even
> when not performed by government employees, will be "government work" by
> definition; or (2) private researchers, when working under government
> funding, become at that time government employees.  (This is a variant
> of the Martin Sabo bill of last year, showing up in a different way.)  
> The legislation would need to be clear both when the articles come into
> the public domain and that authors' moral rights are being retained even
> as the other basic rights of copyright would not be.  (I think this kind
> of legislation could be a real issue for institutions benefitting from
> government funding -- universities, for example.)

I wonder if a change in copyright legislation would indeed be necessary.
Is not the recommendation simply that the published output of all
NIH-funded research be archived in PMC? If so, does this inevitably mean
that the research has to be formally placed into the public domain, or
that the authors (or their institutions, or the publisher, or whoever the
copyright is vested in) will have to give up copyright? Perhaps a more
flexible approach would be to utilise some form of Creative Commons
licence?