Re: Fair use / fair dealing - a fantasy?

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Moderator's note:  I suspect that the correspondents on this 
topic are speaking about slightly different things and all are to 
that extent correct:

1.  If an author transfers all rights under copyright to a 
publisher or anyone else, then s/he has also transferred the 
rights of 'distribution,' which then belong to the new owner.

2.  The rights of fair use (in the US) remain for all including 
the author.

3.  These rights, as we all know, are generally defined in 
Section 107 of the US Copyright Act.  And we all know that the 
specifics and boundaries of fair use can be particularly in 
dispute given new communications technologies.

4.  If the author has signed some other type of agreement, other 
than full transfer, then that agreement will govern the rights of 
the two parties.  These agreements are changing shape.  (The 
LIBLICENSE web site, for example, was the first to mount in 1997 
a simple Author License -- to the publisher -- which retains all 
copyright rights for the author but gives the publisher the 
necessary non-exclusive rights required for publication in a 
journal.)

Ann Okerson


------Original Message------
From: Heather Morrison
Sender: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
ReplyTo: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Jun 5, 2007 11:41 PM
Subject: Fair use / fair dealing - a fantasy?

Sandy Thatcher wrote:  Most journal contracts I am familiar with
specify the transfer of "all rights." Such a transfer means what
it says, quite literally, and it is entirely unnecessary
therefore to include any specific waiver of fair use rights. The
very act of transferring all rights effectively accomplishes
that, and nothing more needs to be added.  Full post at:
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0706/msg00001.html

If this were true, then for such works there is no fair use /
fair dealing - and never was!  This is ludicrous!

Publisher/author agreements vary a great deal with respect to
transfer of rights.  Agreements that give publishers rights to
publish, first publication, and often redistribution, but leave
all other rights in the hands of authors, are now common, as is
the use of Creative Commons licensing.

Authors with options for quality publishing are well advised to
seek the publication route that leaves them their rights.  No
wonder submissions at Hindawi are rising!

Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone,
and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com