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:rainer_at_rainerstumpe.de mailto:Stumpe_at_EuroSciPubl.de
-----Original Message-----
From: Stevan Harnad [SMTP:harnad_at_cogprints.soton.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 1:19 PM
To: stumpe_at_euroscipubl.de
Subject: Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations
Received on Wed Oct 24 2001 - 08:31:03 BST