Internal institutional use (was Fair use)

[Peter Hirtle <pbh6@cornell.edu>]

Mr. Thatcher's original post in the Fair Use thread presented a 
"nightmare scenario" in which authors ignored the wishes of 
publishers and, under an assertion of fair use, made their 
articles available to the world from their web sites or 
institutional repositories.  Mr. Thatcher further supposed that 
the authors accepted other terms, such as "allowing unrestricted 
use of the article within the author's own institution." 
Similarly, the recent White Paper on the academic use of journal 
content from the STM, ALPSP, and AAP/SP argued that articles 
should be available for "internal institutional non-commercial 
research and education purposes" (note the mention of internal).

Can someone explain to me this fascination with internal 
institutional use?  I assume that if an article is posted on an 
open access server, either through the use of an author's 
addendum or because the publisher is Green, then a certain amount 
of external reproduction, distribution, and display is implicitly 
authorized.  Is it just commercial distribution which is 
prohibited?  Or would some go so far as to argue that it is not 
permissible for a faculty member at Institution X to include in 
her syllabus a link to an article by a colleague at another 
school found on an institutional or subject repository at 
Institution Y?

Peter B. Hirtle
CUL Intellectual Property Officer and
    Technology Strategist
Cornell University Library
215 Olin Library
Ithaca, NY  14853-5301
pbh6@cornell.edu
t.  607.255-4033
f.  607/255-2493
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu