On Mon, 6 Aug 2007, Peter Hirtle wrote:

> I for one am in agreement 100% with Sandy Thatcher on this. We already are
> suffering confusion because of the ill-advised decision to use terms like
> "self-archiving" and "open archive," both of which have nothing to do with
> archives or the permanent retention of knowledge.

Both terms were perfectly fine for providing online access (permanently,
of course).

But "open archive" then went on to denote OAI-compliant and interoperable,
but not necessarily Open Access, so "Open Access" was needed as an extra
descriptor. "Repository" was (and is) of course entirely superfluous
("archive" would have done just fine), but now "Institutional Repository"
has consolidated its supererogatory niche, so OA IR is what we have to
make do with.

> Now we have proposal to use
> the term "fair use" in a manner that has nothing to with either the American
> concept of "fair use or the British concept of fair dealing.

The "American concept of fair use or the British concept of fair dealing"
comes from the paper era, and does not fit the online era, especially for
research. So they have to be adapted and updated. Not the online era to
the antique terminology, but the terminology to the online era.

The adaptation needs to be natural, commonsensical and transparent, not
tortured and procrustean, attempting to resurrect obsolete, inapplicable
and incoherent usages of "fair use" by insisting on fidelity to defunct,
papyrocentric intuitions, consigning the commonsense ones to "schmair
use." That would be pedantry, not progress.

> Harnad's
> proposal would just further obfuscate what is meant by both. Further, using
> the term suggests a specific legal basis for the action, when in reality the
> actions may be authorized by license. Schmair use it is... Peter B. Hirtle CUL
> Intellectual Property Officer Technology Strategist Cornell University

It is *fair use* -- legally as well as commonsensically -- to email a
copy of your article to an eprint requester. It is fair use -- legally
as well as commonsensically -- for the requester to read and use that
emailed copy. End of story. The rest would just be self-imposed confusion
and obfuscation. One should update one's understanding of "fair use"
rather than trying to consign these perfectly natural, contemporary
and ubiquitous instances to "schmair use."

(By the way, I'd started calling it the "Fair Use" Button instead of the
"Eprint Request" or "Request Copy" Button, inspired by someone else (I've
forgotten who: felicitous first-coiner please identify thyself!) to call it
that, because that made the Button's purpose and use far more transparent
and comprehensible, intuitively, and people at last understood what the
Button was really about, and for. Does anyone really imagine that this
is the time to call it the "Schmair Use" Button, out of fealty to the
Dark-Ages origins of the term "Fair Use"?)

     "How the Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access Mandate + the 'Fair Use'
     Button Work"
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html

     "Get the Institutional Repository Managers Out of the Decision Loop"
     http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/6482.html
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/260-guid.html

Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/

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OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
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OR
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