Re: Copyright in China

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Alas, the summary of what I was saying is not what I was saying.  Of
course piracy is irrelevant in an OA environment--of course.  But changing
the text is relevant.  My question is how is the integrity of the text
going to be managed.  I am NOT saying that only a commercial publisher can
do this; I am saying that someone has to do it.  As for the quality of
commercial publishers, it's all over the place, as everybody knows.  The
successful not-for-profit publishers (e.g., Oxford University Press, to
choose an unarguable example) are outstanding at what they do.

Let's agree to disagree, but let's not agree to summarize each other's
views inaccurately.  Heck, that was the point of my first post, that the
Chinese done Bill Clinton wrong.

Joe Esposito


On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 22:29:05 EDT, Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca> wrote:

> As for the book, I haven't seen it, and so cannot say whether this
> particular item is parody or bootleg.
> 
> Joe, your assumption seems to be that it will be necessary to protect
> documents against piracy, and that this will be more important with open
> access.
> 
> This simply does not make any sense.  When the information is free,
> there is no incentive for piracy.
> 
> You are also implying that quality requires production in a commercial
> environment.  From my viewpoint, there is no correlation between quality
> of work and production by a commercial entity.  A great deal of
> scholarly publishing is done by nonprofit societies and/or or university
> presses, both of which are known for the quality of their work.
> 
> The commercial sector does produce quality published materials; it also
> produces sensational tabloids.
> 
> To sum:  quality information can be produced by either the nonprofit or
> the commercial sector.  The commercial sector can produce information of
> either high or low quality.  Therefore, there is no correlation between
> quality of information and commercial publishing.
> 
> This is not to say there is no role for the commercial sector in the
> open access environment; of course there is.  BioMedCentral is both a
> commercial entity and a leader in the Open Access movement.
> 
> If there is a contest for ludicrous arguments against open access, I'd
> like to nominate this one!
> 
> best,
> 
> Heather Morrison