If I were representing JSOR in this, I would be reluctant to do business with people who plan in advance how far they will succeed in finding legal justification for violating the intent of the contracts they enter into. Publishers normally negotiate in good faith: they are aware that there will inevitably be some use of the material beyond whatthey bargain for, but they do not expect a planned effort by the contracting organization to systematically violate--or encourage or permit the violation-- of the terms of a contract.
Systematic downloading or republishing their material is explicitly prohibited in their contracts, and the contracts of any other similar distributor or publisher. It is fair that they do so. They have digitized this content, beginning at a time when no other people were prepared to take the economic risk of doing so, and when it was entirely unclear whether it was either a technically or economically feasible proposition. They rely on their revenues for continuing to digitize further content.
Personally I feel they are somewhat over-rigid in their expectations, especially in their unwillingness to deal with individuals for individual article copies:I have told them so in public and private. But that does not justify deliberately interpreting the contract in a way they would not regard as reasonable. If we propose to republish their material that is originally from PD sources, we must make explicit arrangements to do so from the start.
On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Wily D wilydoppelganger@gmail.com wrote:
I discussed this matter at some length with User:Danny a while back. He was, of course, the point man in JSTOR's fight with the foundation over [[JSTOR]], so his perspective might've been skewed, but we never could come to an agreement as to whether JSTOR was doing this or not. The user agreement contains some delightfully vague language which I believe acknowledges that you can do whatever you want with public domain documents in a fashion that prevents you from acccidentically gleaning this.
How much, and in what fashion, they'd object to taking documents off there that are PD, I don't know, but I suspect the only way to find out would be to just do it and see.
Cheers Brian
On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 2:39 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 12/26/2008 11:33:04 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, mbimmler@gmail.com writes:
"I believe if you look into JSTOR's pre-1928 documents, you will immediately find that they are assessing dubious copyright" and "Could you elaborate on this and supply a specific example?" could be formed in much nicer words>>
Although if you look at the history of this thread, you will see that I did ask for a specific example. Now that we know of this non-issue let's explore it a bit more. IF I take a photograph, or even "digitize" (scan) a print document, I own the copyright to what *I* have done. That does *not* give me an automatic copyright to the underlying work *of someone else* and this is the key point here.
If I take a picture of the Declaration of Independence under glass at the National Archives, I gain a copyright to my image. That does NOT give me a copyright to the actual underlying document that I've imaged. If I take a picture of the Lincoln Memorial, I gain a copyright to my image. Not to the item imaged.
My copyright to my image whether paper or digital, whether glossy, flat, or airbrushed. Any derivative work based substantially on my image, in such a way as to deprive me of income from my image, etc etc etc.
This, as I'm sure we're all aware, does not, in any way, prevent anyone from taking SAID image (even), extracting all the text from it, and then presenting it as the original PD document (in plain text not as an image).
SHOULD you not be so lazy as to actually get your own copy of said original PD document, I'm sure you'll sleep much sounder. I however won't be limited by that level of silliness.
Now can we move on?
Will Johnson
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