Re: Open Access & Conservation Commons

["William Walsh" <libwdw@langate.gsu.edu>]

Peter Banks argues that a "Creative Commons License would be disaster
for authors, publishers, and librarians, since it affords no protection
against the misstatement, exploitation, and diffusion of a work."  When
it's noted that Creative Commons offers a variety of licenses which
permit certain uses, while restricting others, Peter attacks the Berlin
Declaration on Open Access.

Some on this list may be interested in Lawrence Lessig's November
letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education, excerpted below:

To the Editor:

We thank The Chronicle and Andrea L. Foster for two thoughtful articles
on Creative Commons ("Who Should Own Science?" and "Alternative License
for the Arts Fails to Catch On in Academe," The Chronicle, October 1).
It is, however, necessary to correct two important errors and an
unfortunate implication.

To recapitulate, Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that
offers an alternative to full copyright. ... We offer creators a way to
encourage certain uses of their works while declaring some rights
reserved. 

...The article about the Science Commons carries a more troubling
error. The article centers on an imagined conflict between Science
Commons on the one hand and technology-transfer offices, the Bayh-Dole
Act, and patents on the other. This is a shame because much of what
Science Commons will be doing has little to do with universities'
licensing policies, and those portions that do are far from anti-
patent, or anti-university-licensing. ...

None of our initiatives implies an attack on patents, licensing, or
Bayh-Dole, any more than Creative Commons implies an attack on
copyright. We hope to work with, not against, the technology-transfer
offices. They, too, we suspect, are not fans of unnecessary burdens
created by the law.

Bill


William Walsh
Head, Acquisitions Department
Georgia State University Library
100 Decatur Street, SE
Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: 404.651.2149
Fax: 404.651.2148
Email:  wwalsh@gsu.edu