RE: OUP Project TORCH - Thanks; Oct 1 deadline reminder

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Dear Adam, 

It is very possible that you have proposed the best course to be pursued
in the future, but it will not be possible for some time.

I apologize to my friends at OUP; I recognize their good intentions, but
their proposal remains a terribly unfortunate solution to this dilemma. I
suggest a possible temporary measure--which is that they publish initially
books which either contain no illustration whose rights they do not have,
or those with only a few such, whose licenses can be afforded. I recognize
its insufficiency, but this would establish their program, and hopefully
give them some negotiating power with other rights holders. (And I hope
that sufficient appropriate titles exist!)

It is especially difficult that the length of copyright provided by
present law in the US and the UK is such that these considerations will
for many years affect the good intentions of publishers, hamper reprinting
of needed books, and slow the development of electronic resources, while
not providing the income to the copyright holder that was intended. If the
licensing is too expensive to be afforded, nobody gains.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Adam Hodgkin
Sent: Wed 10/6/2004 11:22 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: OUP Project TORCH - Thanks; Oct 1 deadline reminder 
 
I don't hold any brief for OUP. In fact their licensing policy has on
occasions that concern us seemed to be less open to the world at large
(and us in particular) than it should be, but this is surely an
unreasonably sour reaction.

It is certainly not reasonable to portray OUP as a mutilator of books when
licensing restrictions prevent them from practically providing
illustrations to all the titles that they may wish to include in a
database collection which will surely be very useful to those who need to
search and consult the books in question.

It is anyway questionable that a complex system of 'licensing' for various
e-uses will be the best way of handling the electronic advantages of
illustrations in books which are monographic or theoretical in character.
An effective way of citing and identifying illustrations which may already
be available would be a better way of handling this issue. The same goes
for 'musical' citations. Once there are effective digital repositories of
artistic and musical objects, theoretical works will be better off citing
the relevant images and audio files, rather than attempting to reproduce
them. That is of course a matter of opinion, but its one that should be
given some consideration.

Give the publishers a break!

Adam Hodgkin
http://www.xreferplus.com