Re: Another post about the Georgia State copyright case

[Alex Holzman <aholzman@temple.edu>]

Excuse me, but who subsidizes Oxford, Cambridge, or Sage?  The 
first two return rather substantial amounts of money to their 
home universities, who do not seem to be complaining about what 
their presses are doing.  Indeed, some years ago Oxford 
University specifically used some of the "surplus" its Press 
generated to help the university compete with salaries offered to 
star faculty members by American Ivy League and other well-off 
schools.  I'm pretty sure that didn't help OUP's year-to-year 
operations.  Pint is, this is all a lot more complicated than 
evil publishers aligned against virtuous librarians.

To my mind, this whole episode began with the extreme policy 
Sandy cites.  Extreme ideological behavior tends to beget equal 
and opposite reactions; I expect blame and credit can be found 
everywhere, depending on the observer's point of view.  The 
really unfortunate aspect in all this is that it tends to drown 
out moderate voices on both sides who are trying to discover new 
and innovative ways to cooperate.  Though ideologically driven 
behavior seems to be part of the zeitgeist, many university press 
publishers and many librarians have worked to counter it over the 
past few years, exemplified by the ARL-AAUP working group founded 
this past year following several years of gradually increasing 
library-press meetings and exchanges and working together on 
actual projects.  Kudos to the moderates.

Alex Holzman
Director
Temple University Press

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 7:43 PM, Kevin Smith 
<kevin.l.smith@duke.edu> wrote:
> The plaintiffs in this case had clever lawyers as well, from a
> prominent New York law firm.  I very much doubt they would have
> encouraged their clients to bring a federal lawsuit in order to
> vindicate a sense of moral outrage; that is an extravagance even
> these wealthy, and well-subsidized, publishers could hardly
> afford.  This case is, and always has been, about money.  As it
> begins to appear that the gamble of suing one's customers in
> order to squeeze out greater revenues has been a losing one, it
> is inevitable, I suppose, that it will be dressed up as a matter
> of principle.
>
> By the way, I do not address the issue of the application of the
> new GSU policy for the sound reason that I know nothing about it.
> All I have seen is the highly partisan rhetoric found in the
> plaintiffs' filings, which Sandy repeats here.  The judge may or
> may not see things the same way, and it is her opinion that
> matters now.
>
> Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
> Scholarly Communications Officer
> Duke University
> 919-668-4451
> kevin.l.smith@duke.edu