On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Richard Stallman wrote: >sh>Texts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual >sh>property. > > To refer to a text as someone's "intellectual property" spreads a > dangerous propaganda term which also spreads confusion. (See > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html for more explanation > of why this is so.)
Richard, I've read the GNU passage, and I agree that "intellectual property" is not a good descriptor for software, as code can be built onto and out of others' code and programmers and users are better served if the code is open and can be modified by others. But this formula simply does not fit text. The text I write is indeed my intellectual property, even if it is give-away text. All that means is that no one else is allowed to claim to have authored it. Now that I have read your recommended passage, can I ask you to read mine? "5. PostGutenberg Copyright Concerns" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#5 We are in agreement that copyright lawyers and perhaps legislators are trying to force disparate things -- like music, patents, software, and texts (both give-away and non-give-away) -- into the same Procrstean bed, and that the results are not only unsatisfactory but sometimes even logically incoherent. But it is important that you should not do the same thing either! What is good for and true of software is not necessarily good for and true of texts. >sh>The text is still the author's >sh>intellectual property," in the sense that authorship is retained by >sh>the author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, > > That is even more confusing, since it stretches the meaning of > "intellectual property" even further than normal. Not at all. What could be simpler? I wrote this text. No one else may claim to have written it. End of story. (The rest is about whether or not I deem it a give-away text.) Copyright has (and always has had) at least two functions: (1) To protect against theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism) (2) To protect against theft-of-text (piracy, a word I know you don't like, when applied to software, but perfectly valid when applied to non-give-away text) ALL text authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property (sic), their text, from (1), theft-of-text-authorship (plagiarism). Only NON-give-away authors want copyright protection of their intellectual property, their non-give-away text, from (2), theft-of-text (piracy). You are quite right that (1) has nothing to do with "copying" in the sense of making copies bearing the author's correct name. So perhaps the legal protection against plagiarism should not be subsumed under "copyright" law in this sense. But that is a mere terminological matter, for one can certainly describe copying my text without my name, and affixing your name to it, as an illicit form of copying. So maybe it should stay under copyright law after all. > To avoid confusion, I suggest you rewrite it as follows: > > When you write an article, you are the copyright holder; you > are free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line > (e.g., by self-archiving), as you see fit. Unfortunately, that does not quite cover it. For an author may be foolish enough to sign a copyright transfer agreement, assigning all rights to give away or sell his texts, online or on paper, to someone else, say, a publisher. But that would still not alter the matter of intellectual property, i.e., authorship. He would still be the author. And if someone else claimed to have authored it, it would still be a violation of his rights, even after he had assigned the copyright, without restrictions, to a publisher. I am not an expert in this (nor especially interested in it, I might add), but I believe that it is only if an author puts his text in the public domain that he loses the intellectual property rights, i.e., he cannot prosecute someone for plagiarizing it. (I am not sure about this last matter, and someone may wish to correct me, but please, let us not side-track the Forum discussion into these esoteric paths http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1713.html as it is not what we are concerned about here. We are concerned with GIVEAWAY texts -- peer-reviewed research articles -- for which their authors definitely want to retain their authorship (their intellectual proprietership); but they also want those full-texts to be accessible online, and fully copiable, for free for all.) See also: "PostGutenberg Copyrights and Wrongs for Give-Away Research" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1309.html Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html or http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess and the Free Online Scholarship Movement: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm