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Re: American Chemical Society license 

Sarah Stevens-Rayburn wrote:

>I've recently run across a license that gets the "speaking out of both
>sides of the mouth" award, aka the "if you can't beat 'em, confuse 'em"
>prize.  I'd be interested in hearing of possible interpretations of the
>following.  As I read it, the first paragraph says, "You can't do anything
>with this material except read it.  You can't print it; you can't send it
>to a colleague; and you shouldn't even consider using it for interlibrary
>loans, despite what the Copyright Law may say." 
>
>First paragraph reads:
>Use of any of the copyrighted material is only for the individual's
>personal use. Articles and portions thereof and information
>obtained from this service are not to be re-published in any media, print
>or electronic, resold, or otherwise distributed to others,
>including inter-library loan.

Guess I am just having one of those days, but it does not say this.
"Personal use" would include the "Fair Use Doctrine", or at least one of my
lawyer friends indicated that in a different context (so caveats apply).

But what they want to limit is that my library signs up, and then some
distant colleague asks me to send him a copy of the article.  In the
hard copy world, that begs "Fair Use" a bit. But are they going to sue me
for sending it to a colleague.  Doubtful.  However, if my library
accessed the article and sent it via inter-library loan to another library,
well ACS does not want that to happen, and has expressly forbidden it,
and if a library did it often enough, well ACS might sue.

>Having denied one's freedoms under the Copyright Law in the first
>paragraph, the second paragraph then gives back some modicum of ability to
>actually use the material, but only if additional fees are paid to the
>CCC.  In other words, you cannot use this material in accordance with the
>fair use provisions of the Copyright Law, but you may use it "beyond the
>fair use provisions" if you're willing to pay for it. 
>
>Licensed users, excluding document delivery services, registered with the
>Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) may make a printed
>copy of the article for internal or personal use beyond the fair use
>provisions of the US Copyright Act, provided that the appropriate
>fees are paid to the CCC . Anyone may excerpt up to 200 words per article

I read that to mean that if you use the article BEYOND the "Fair Use",
then you have to pay for it, and for convience, IF you are registered
with CCC, then pay that way, don't bother ACS about it.

>for noncommercial, scholarly purposes with appropriate

So you can quote up to 200 words without explicit permission.  Sounds
OK to me.

>credit to the source. Permission to reuse, republish, or retransmit text
>must be sent in writing to the ACS Copyright Office, 1155 16th
>Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, or via FAX to 202-872-6060.

So if you are going to republish a large (>200 words) part of the article,
then write for permission to do that.  For academic use, my bet is that
ACS would grant it (but maybe ACS are really bad people?).

Fortunately, lawyers did not write the agreement or you would have 14 pages
of ............

>             Click to proceed if you AGREE to these terms.

And of course a skilled lawyer could argue that you AGREED to the terms
as you were able to interpret them, or as a skilled lawyer was able to
interpret them, or as any reasonable person could interpret them or ...

I really don't think that the ACS license here is double-speak nor
abhorant.

Try reading http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html and compare
to the ACS license.  For example, one finds:

      You may not download, copy, or store any Content other than (1) one
      stored electronic and one paper copy of any article, or (2) with
      prior written permission of JSTOR and the publisher of such Content.

I am totally confused by literally interpreting the sentence.
But JSTOR are (IMHO) 'good' people and are not trying to legaleeze academics
to death, just trying to keep dishonest people from ripping them off.

And my last word is http://econwpa.wustl.edu/copyright.html

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