[WikiEN-l] Millions for salaries, not one cent for defense

[Andrew Gray]

On 21 July 2011 21:19, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Any action here would be in contract (for breach of the terms and
>> conditions), not in copyright.
>
> Indeed. But everyone would be happier if JSTOR stopped trying to
> enclose the public domain.

The *Royal Society* are the ones trying to enclose the public domain.
JSTOR host the scans and provide the metadata to make it usable.

Their line, I understand it, is that copyright clearance and so forth
rests with the contributing institutions and not with themselves.
Google Books take a similar stance; they pro-actively released a
swathe of PD material, but if you want to get something additional
released as released you need to sort it out with the "responsible"
library and then it'll get regraded. (Or this was the situation when I
helped someone fill in the forms a few years back, anyway.)

There has been at least one occasion where JSTOR have hosted a journal
and later partially pulled it because it turned out the contributing
publishers didn't own the rights to some issues, so they do
occasionally do active involvement when rights are challenged. (The
Google analogy breaks down here...)

In this case, note the copyright statement:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/102295 - "Philosophical Transactions
(1683-1775) © 1695 The Royal Society"

Compare, for example:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40107566 - "The International History
Review © 1996 Taylor & Francis, Ltd."

One of these claims is obviously more defensible than the other, but
note that they're both third-party. JSTOR no more claims the copyright
than Amazon claims to own the copyright to Kindle editions.

Yes, this content being open would be a wonderful thing, but I
honestly think we're at risk of identifying the wrong villain if we
keep insisting that JSTOR qua JSTOR are evil and must be brought to
heel. The Google Books approach suggests a way we could get release of
the material to work, but it's the RS we'd need to engage with to get
it to work. There's very little benefit I can see to be gained by
chasing JSTOR here, and a real risk of poisoning the waters for future
cooperation.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

(Disclaimer: in a previous job I was the named person responsible for
a JSTOR membership, among other things.)