Dear Mr. Oppenheim, I received the attached correspondence. Although I am not a lawyer nor an expert in UK legislation, I wonder if the publishers have not protected their interest in the amendments to the copyright act. The UK is a member of the EU and it is EU law to protect copyright of works in digital/electronic form. That might not be the case for protecting their copyright in the typographic layout for electronic versions. But the UK Copyright Act explicitly states: ----------Quote--------- Section 27.-(1) In this Part "infringing copy", in relation to a copyright work, shall be construed in accordance with this section..... (4) Where in any proceedings the question arises whether an article is an infringing copy and it is shown- (a) that the article is a copy of the work, and (b) that copyright subsists in the work or has subsisted at any time, it shall be presumed until the contrary is proved that the article was made at a time when copyright subsisted in the work. ........ (6) In this Part "infringing copy" includes a copy falling to be treated as an infringing copy by virtue of any of the following provisions- ...... section 56(2) (further copies, adaptations, &c. of work in electronic form retained on transfer of principal copy),..... --------End of Quote-----
I think that protects publishers in the digital times, who have exclusive copyright transfered to them by the authors. My point is: publishers do not need to own exclusive rights in (scientific/scholarly) publications, if the author promises not to commercially exploit his work otherwise. European Science Publisher in addition is set up to share all profits from commerciallizing scientific publications with the scientific community. Speaking for the (experimental) natural sciences, there is no desire to have various copies of the nearly the same content available on the web. In a public discussion at the EMBL in Heidelberg, where I joined the podium, scientsts voted for peer review (i.e., certified copies) of journal articles on the web. It is quite time consuming to compare various versions retrieved and it might only be possible to an expert (peer!) to identify the valid version. Yours, Rainer Stumpe Dr. Rainer Stumpe ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.rainerstumpe.de http://www.EuroSciPubl.de mailto:rai...@rainerstumpe.de mailto:stu...@euroscipubl.de -----Original Message----- From: Stevan Harnad [SMTP:har...@cogprints.soton.ac.uk] Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 1:19 PM To: stu...@euroscipubl.de Subject: Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations
