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Re: Not negotiable?
I'd like to comment on the question raised last month by Rick Anderson regarding why a publisher might decide to make its licenses non-negotiable. We at the University of Michigan Press have, in fact, decided that the two site licenses we have written so far should not be negotiable. The first is for the Dictionary of Old English Corpus and the second is for the Middle English Compendium. These licenses can be viewed at <http://www.press.umich.edu/sitelic/index.html>. (For descriptions of the products themselves, go to <http://www.press.umich.edu/digpub/digpub.html>.) We have priced subscriptions to these bodies of work as low as possible, seeking to cover just the basic costs of production and our overhead. We have not included enough of a margin in the price to allow for time spent in conversations and negotiations with individual libraries or consortia interested in revising terms of the license. In these cases, there is a clear link between offering as low a price as possible and limiting the amount of staff time spent in administering licenses. While we will not be negotiating provisions of our licenses with individual libraries, we welcome feedback from the library community about our licenses in general. We have already accommodated concerns raised by some members of the lib-license list about defining a library's authorized users explicitly to include walk-in traffic, and mentioning the role of fair use. If there are other concerns that come to mind upon reading these licenses, please let me know (you can communicate with me directly at mbmiller@umich.edu). Michelle Miller-Adams Manager, Digital Publishing The University of Michigan Press On Sun, 19 Apr 1998 14:14:48 -0400 (EDT) Rick Anderson wrote: > From: Rick Anderson <rick_anderson@uncg.edu> > Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 14:14:48 -0400 (EDT) > Subject: Not negotiable? Ha! (was Re: Company of Biologists) > To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu > > > >Thank you for your E-mail dated the 27th March 1998. Unfortunately, the > > >terms and conditions relating to the site licence application form are > > >not negotiable. > > I'm just quixotic enough to hope that librarians the world over > will unite in boycotting products whose publishers refuse to negotiate the > terms of their license agreements. (Librarians unite! You have nothing > to lose but your liability! You have a world of indemnification to gain!) > It may be appropriate in rare cases to accept a pre-fab license -- if it > already fits perfectly the needs of both parties, for example, ha ha ha -- > but I can't imagine that it makes sense in the vast majority of cases. > > Publishers, we know you're out there -- what do you think? Can > you give us a good reason not to insist on negotiating license terms? > > ---------------------- > Rick Anderson > Head Acquisitions Librarian > Jackson Library > UNC Greensboro > 1000 Spring Garden St. > Greensboro, NC 27402-6175 > (336) 334-5281 > rick_anderson@uncg.edu
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