Nowhere in the world, ideas and concepts are protected by copyright. Thats
just, because otherwise nobody would be allowed to take-up a research field
of another person.
The best protection for innovative ideas is the peer review system of
recognized journals. It quite effectively filters duplication of ideas and
concepts. Formal publishing (not necessary in print!) would also establish
the "right of priority" for new ideas. At least the community would know
who first published the news and honor it (career?).
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: Joseph Pietro Riolo [SMTP:riolo_at_VOICENET.COM]
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 9:46 PM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations
On Thu, 8 Nov 2001, Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_cogprints.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> There are two almost entirely independent dimensions of copyright
> protection:
>
> CT: Protection from theft-of-text (piracy, illicit acquisition or sale of
> the copyright owner's text)
>
> and
>
> CA: Protection from theft-of-authorship (plagiarism, the claim to
> having written the author's text).
In the U.S., copyright does not protect authors from plagiarism. I can
read an article written by another person, get all the ideas and facts
from the article, and write a new article using my own words to express
the same or similar ideas and facts without giving any credit to the
person. That is because ideas and facts are in the public domain and
no one can own them exclusively. Section 106A in the U.S. Copyright Law
allows only the authors of the works of the visual art such as artists
to claim the authorship only for their works. But, they cannot claim
authorship over the uncopyrightable items in their works and copyrightable
items that are independently created by other people in their works.
That is where we differ.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo_at_voicenet.com>
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
post in the public domain.
Received on Fri Nov 09 2001 - 16:17:22 GMT