RE: Confidentiality clause is back in at Nature

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> You can tell anyone you want how much you paid for a car, but if
> you own a dealership, can you announce trade data to the world?

You can certainly announce price data to the world, and price 
data are what we're talking about in this example.  Let me try to 
save some bandwidth here.  I think I'm using the term 
"transparency" differently than you and Dick are, Joe.  What I 
mean by "transparent" pricing is a system that allows buyers to 
talk freely and publicly about what they've paid.  I don't 
necessarily mean a situation in which sellers all go out of their 
way to broadcast publicly every detail of their wholesale and 
retail practices.

> A practical outcome of public posting of licenses is that there
> can never be any negotiations.  Thus there never can be any
> customization of contracts to account for special circumstances.

Transparency (as I'm using the term) doesn't require that 
publishers publicly post every negotiated version of their 
licenses.  It only requires that they not forbid their customers 
from discussing license and pricing terms with others.  (And if 
what you mean is that public posting of _standard_ license terms 
precludes negotiations, then that's simply flat wrong.  I've 
negotiated scores of licenses with publishers whose standard 
license agreements are posted publicly, and who are yet willing 
to negotiate a customized version with any buyer who asks.) 
Nature's contention that secrecy is required in order for them to 
do business is ridiculous -- scores of similar publishers 
demonstrate this every day by doing business quite nicely without 
secrecy.  It may be necessary in order for Nature to do business 
in a particular way that Nature prefers, but it's Nature's choice 
to do business that way.  And it's our choice whether or not 
we'll help them by submitting to vows of secrecy.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
rickand@unr.edu