RE: Column on licenses

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Joe,

Thanks for alerting us to your piece in Publishers' Weekly. You 
say that you know of no publisher with a clear policy on how 
libraries can use e-books. I find this a challenging statement 
because I would be surprised if Springer and Elsevier did't have 
one. However, I do know this - we have one. We post some Terms 
and Conditions for using our e-library on our website (you can 
find the link at the bottom of every page.) We issued this in 
2004 and so far, we're finding no problems at all with it and 
neither do our growing number of customers.

I agree with Kevin Smith about the horror that would entail if 
every publisher issued a formal license with their books. This is 
why we do our utmost NOT to sign licenses with our customers, 
relying instead on our Terms and Conditions, trust and existing 
copyright laws to prevent widespread abuse (we realise that some 
level of abuse will occur whatever we do!). Some customers, 
usually, I have to say, in the US, insist on having a license. We 
think this is an administratively expensive way to work together. 
After all, we never signed licenses when we sold printed books to 
librarians - so what's different now? Sure, it's easier and 
cheaper for someone to do illegal copying of copyright material 
from an e-book - but signing a license won't change that!

Your conclusion, as ever, is spot-on. Many book publishers do 
need to get beyond worrying about their print business and start 
experimenting with new marketing channels (but don't always 
expect miracles, all our books are on Google's Books service and 
we're getting great visibility but precious few sales so far). We 
stopped worrying about our print business in 1998 and haven't 
looked back - two-thirds of our books revenues this year will 
come from 'e'. (Traditionalists reading this might be comforted 
to know that every book we publish is also available in print as 
well.) If anyone wants to know how we did this, I'll be telling 
our story at an ALPSP seminar on November 6th in London, UK, and 
at an SSP seminar on November 14th in Washington, DC - maybe 
you'd like to come along yourself?

Toby Green
Head of Dissemination and Marketing
OECD Publishing
http://www.oecd.org/Bookshop
http://www.SourceOECD.org  - our award-winning e-library
http://www.oecd.org/OECDdirect  - our new title alerting service

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Kevin L Smith
Sent: 18 October, 2006 12:32 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Column on licenses

I think the principle problem that your suggestion would create, 
from a library point of view, is an unwieldy proliferation of 
licenses.  It is already the case that libraries are hard pressed 
to keep track of the various terms in licenses for electronic 
databases; licenses for monographs would increase this difficulty 
exponentially.

That sad truth is that copyright acts as a kind of default set of 
rules that librarians more or less know and that prevent most of 
us from putting current monographic literature online, absent the 
intervention of Google and its deep pockets.  I don't think 
publishers' licenses for monographs would really change that 
situation, since the variety of terms and the lack of expert 
staff to manage the resultant morass would prevent libraries from 
actually exploiting those licenses that might offer the 
opportunity.

If the goal is to make current monographic literature easier to 
provide in digital form, how about a compulsory licensing scheme? 
It would have the advantage of a known set of terms that would be 
manageable, and would allow libraries to chose those disciplines 
in which they want to invest resources toward online access.

Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
Scholarly Communications Officer
Perkins Library, Duke University
Durham, NC  27708
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu


"Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>
Sent by: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
10/16/2006 09:15 PM
Subject:  Column on licenses

I recently published a column with my partner Mike Shatzkin in 
Publishers Weekly.  The topic is the need for publishers to craft 
end-user licenses with every product they ship, including 
hardcopy books, as a means to make litigation unnecessary.  Here 
is the link:

http://publishersweekly.com/article/CA6378889.html?display=community&industry
=Soapbox&verticalid=792

If that link gets broken, go to http://publishersweekly.com and
search for the "Soapbox" feature.

I would appreciate hearing online or off from members of the
library community as to how to improve the position Mike and I
are taking in this column.  We talk to publishers all the time;
once in a while they actually listen to us.

Thank you.

Joe Esposito