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At 01:48 PM 5/3/97 +0100, Stevan Harnad wrote: ".......There is absolutely no way to sort this out unless a clear distinction >is made between (1) the COMMON-CAUSE condition, where authors and >publishers are both on the same side, wanting to protect their product >against theft, and (2) the CONFLICTING-CAUSE condition, where the >publishers want to "protect" the product from theft and the authors do >not. > >Equally important is another distinction that is being blurred in this >blinkered rush to provide for copyright "protection" on the paper and >software model: the distinction between (a) THEFT OF TEXT and (b) THEFT >OF AUTHORSHIP. So authors are being led to believe that they must >support (a) if they want (b), which is utter nonsense........." Both of these are key points. But they have been oversimplified. (a) We need to recognise that there are two sorts of author -- those who make their living from their royalties, and those who also have a salary. The former will tend to make common cause with their publisher over copyright; the latter will not. Normally, the copyright to the latter's writings belongs to their employer. What makes academics different is that even though they belong to the second category, their employers have not generally -- until now -- claimed copyright in what they write. But this could change, and one of the possible scenarios sees universities deciding to profit from their employees' writings. And even if one is an academic author, not paid for primary research papers, one still does do some writing for money: review articles, encyclopaedia chapters, text-books, editing multi-authored books, etc. These don't contribute (much) to tenure or (in UK parlance) the RAE, and people won't write them unless they're paid. (b) In fact, "theft" in this context can mean more than two different things. By "theft of authorship", does Harnad mean plagiarism? If so, I would have thought that all authors would be against it. But "theft of text" can have different meanings. Piracy -- the publishing *for monetary gain* of an edition not authorised by the copyright owner -- *is* theft, because you are selling something that isn't yours to sell. But photocopying is rather less heinous, in most people's commonsense view, provided that you don't try to make a profit by selling the copies. It might theoretically reduce the copyright owner's income -- because you don't buy a copy -- but in most cases you wouldn't have bought a copy, and in many cases you couldn't (because the document is out of print, though not out of copyright). And finally there is the case discussed by Elliott Lieb, Chris Zielinski and Ann Okerson, where you are trying to produce an anthology or quote extensively from an old work in writing a new one. The major difficulty in this case is usually not the fee, but, as Okerson says, the sheer difficulty of getting in touch with all the owners and getting replies out of them. Bodies like the ALCS are very valuable here. The production of such anthologies is unlikely to reduce sales of the original work at all, and therefore it is in the copyright owner's interest to charge a very moderate fee -- otherwise the new work won't get off the ground and they'll get nothing. (c) There are also several sorts of publisher. Zielinski points oput that scholarly publishing remains very profitable; that has always been the point, that their profits are taking money from the academic/research system which could be more usefully be spent within the system. But the situation is confused by the fact that the present arrangement also makes money for university presses and learned societies! Fytton Rowland *********************************************************************** Fytton Rowland, Lecturer, and Programme Tutor for Information and Publishing Studies, Department of Information and Library Studies, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leics LE11 3TU, UK. Phone (direct line) +44 (0) 1509 223039 Fax +44 (0) 1509 223053 E-mail [log in to unmask] http://info.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/staff/frowland.html ************************************************************************ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%