Re: Open Access Does Not require Republishing and Reprinting Rights

From: Iain Stevenson <vip_at_soi.city.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 11:42:08 +0000

Seth Johnson wrote:

> The difference for public domain in terms of flexible access to the
> scientific literature, is only that the original expression of the
> document, of substantive portions which exhibit originality, is no
> longer covered by copyright.
>
> Other options provide this level of access by means of permissions,
> the most effective being the copyleft formulation.

I'm sorry Seth but that is nonsense and pernicious nonsense too. There
is no such thing as "public domain" except for material out of copyright
after the end of the legal term (70 years pma). Copyright applies to
all original work created (not even necessarily published): Copyright
is an essential bastion of academic freedom and the only people who
benefit from its abuse are pirates, charlatans and crooks. It's the
missing debate in the open access question. How are creators' rights
protected, particularly in e-environments? Doubtless Stevan will have
an answer with which I will doubtless disagree. The Bush administration
may disregard Kyoto but I don't think even they disregard Berne!

Iain Stevenson,
Publishing Studies,
City University, UK.

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Received on Fri Jan 16 2004 - 11:42:08 GMT