Research Works Act, HR3699
There is one aspect of the proposed Act HR3699 that is very interesting. It is an admission by the publishers involved that they do not at present have any intrinsic intellectual property right to control the disposition of the Version of Record otherwise known as the 'publisher's pdf'. The Act is an attempt to create a new right. You should read the full proposed Act (see Note 4). It is absurd, and badly drafted, perhaps deliberately to mislead. Let me tease this out a bit. The author of an article, or of a book, creates the work and owns the copyright in normal circumstances (unless the work was created for an employer). Copy-editing, layout, pagination, typesetting and publishing do not create any new IP, so publishers of scholarly articles have no intrinsic intellectual property (IP) rights over the Version of Record - it remains as it was at the start: the intellectual property of the author. It is easy to demonstrate this: . Pick up a random set of books (non-fiction, fiction or text books) and turn to the front matter. Who is listed as the copyright holder? In nearly every case the author. If the complex task of editing and publishing of a book does not generate any new IP, why would it do so in the far simpler case of articles? (See Notes 1 and 2.) . If there was any new IP generated by editing and publishing, the publishers of open access journals would have to transfer it to the author to be included in the Creative Commons licence applying to the VoR. They do not. . If I as an author contract with a private service to type up my manuscript (as in days past) or proof-read it and correct its English, I do not expect that I have given them any rights in the work, nor do they. Artists do not expect that the acts of framing their work for sale or displaying it in a gallery creates any new IP either. . Publishers used to routinely send authors a bunch of reprints of their work so they could dispose of it one-on-one (it was indisputably theirs); it was legitimate to charge for extra reprints as there was a printing and paper cost. Now they provide a pdf, and no extra copy option. It is clear that publishers have no intrinsic IP rights in the VoR. I do not know where the idea that they did arose, but it was probably about the time of the Internet's arrival and online article servers. Prior to that, it simply would not have occurred to anyone as relevant. The publisher claim to control the VoR in fact relies exclusively on the contract between the author and the publisher. The author grants the publisher at least a [non-exclusive worldwide] licence to publish, and the publisher contracts to supply editing and layout services and to publish the work in exchange for the licence. Of course in many cases the author grants the publisher an exclusive licence, or grants a complete transfer of copyright. In such cases, the publisher has a claim against the author if he or she breaks the terms of the contract by re-publishing the work as OA. (I use the word 'publish' in the sense of the Copyright Act, not as academics understand it.) The proposed Act is pointless and doomed to fail, as the Copyright Law of the world is a set of international interlocking agreements. HR3699 is not an amendment to the Copyright Act, which would be instant death to it. Even if by some quirk of US politics it got passed into law, it would apply nowhere else, and would be extraordinarily unlikely to be copied. All it attempts to do is prevent US agencies from enacting OA requirements. Note 1. There are some exceptions. If the publisher or the author engage a third party to prepare illustrations for a text manuscript, the artist/photographer will also be listed as copyright owner of these. This almost never applies to scholarly articles in which illustrations are prepared by the author, though it will apply to the populist science press such as Scientific American, New Scientist and National Geographic. Note 2. Exceptions may also occur in compendia such as dictionaries and encyclopedias (mostly reference texts). Note 3. This proposed Act is a side-show to the RFI, except insofar as it distracts attention from the main activity, and reveals the wish of some publishers to maintain monopoly rent profits for as long as possible. Looked at directly and analysed, it suggests a strong motive to require publishers to adopt sustainable business practices, sooner rather than later. Restrictive trade practices cannot be justified in the present financial state of the world. Note 4. See http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3699ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr3699ih.pdf and http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3699:. Note 5. The Australian Copyright Act describes adaptation (which attracts new IP) as follows: "adaptation" means: (a) in relation to a literary work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#liter ary_work> in a non-dramatic form a version of the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> (whether in its original language or in a different language) in a dramatic form; (b) in relation to a literary work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#liter ary_work> in a dramatic form a version of the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> (whether in its original language or in a different language) in a non - dramatic form; (ba) in relation to a literary work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#liter ary_work> being a computer program <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s47ab.html#comp uter_program> --a version of the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> (whether or not in the language, code or notation in which the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> was originally expressed) not being a reproduction of the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> ; (c) in relation to a literary work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#liter ary_work> (whether in a non - dramatic form or in a dramatic form): (i) a translation of the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> ; or (ii) a version of the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> in which a story or action <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s135al.html#act ion> is conveyed solely or principally by means of pictures; and (d) in relation to a musical work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#music al_work> --an arrangement or transcription of the work <http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s189.html#work> . None of this describes copy-editing! Arthur Sale Tasmania, Australia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20120113/26dcc470/attachment-0001.html
