Re: Peggy Hoon on licenses

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

So, although the court that ruled in the Texaco photocopying case 
found the use in that context to be "commercial" because the 
research was of ultimate benefit to a for-profit enterprise, does 
this definition run contrary to that ruling and call this kind of 
use "noncommercial"? That could be confusing in light of the 
judicial precedent.

Does this mean that if a scholar were to post a collection of 
articles on an IR, that anthology would be deemed "noncommercial 
use" even though exactly the same act done through a non-profit 
university press would be "commercial use" because the publisher 
would be charging for it? What if the publisher (as most 
university presses do) operated on a cost-recovery model 
("recovery of direct costs")? Would the addition of a modest 
royalty paid to the editor move this from "noncommercial" to 
"commercial"?

As you may see, I'm not convinced we still have full clarity even 
with this definition.

Sandy Thatcher


> A number of model licenses have what appear to me a very clear 
> definition of Commercial Use (BioOne has adopted this 
> definition). This, from licensingmodels.org's Consortial 
> License, is a good example:
>
> Commercial Use Use for the purposes of monetary reward (whether 
> by or for the Consortium or a Member or an Authorized User) by 
> means of sale, resale, loan, transfer, hire or other form of 
> exploitation of the Licensed Materials. Neither recovery of 
> direct costs by the Consortium or any Member from Authorized 
> Users, nor use by the Consortium or a Member or by an Authorized 
> User of the Licensed Materials in the course of research funded 
> by a commercial organization, is deemed to be Commercial Use.
>
> Mark Kurtz  |  Director of Business Development  |  BioOne
> 21 Dupont Circle Suite 800  |  Washington, DC  20036
> mkurtz@arl.org
> www.BioOne.org
>
> On Mar 2, 2011, at 5:54 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote:
> >  While I agree about the general utility of CC licenses, I wish
> >  someone could explain to me what the difference between
> >  "commercial" and "noncommercial" use is. The CC itself conducted
> >  a survey a couple of years ago and found little consensus beyond
> >  a very small core of shared understanding of what the distinction
> >  connotes. This is not just a philosophical concern, since very
> >  real practical consequences depend on knowing the difference as
> >  it applies to various publishing ventures.
> >
> >  Sandy Thatcher