I have given a legal analysis of ORBi in German at:
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5420548/
The practice and legal framework is nonsense.
(1) Repository managers should make available all content OA if there
are no publisher's permission barriers.
I guess most scholars are using the request button without having
asked for publisher's permission.
(2) University-wide access is allowed if and only if
(i) there is a special license (from the author or the publisher for this)
Such a publisher's repository license only for university-wide access
is'nt usual.
(ii) national copyright law regards university-wide access not as public.
I have argued that according to European directives there are serious
doubts that this is the case in Belgium. In Germany it is definitively
not the case.
(3) It is nonsense that the "OA"-license is applicable to items which
can be requested with the button.
(4) It is absolutely unclear what the Liege OA license referring to
BOAI means and if it is LIBRE OA.
Are derivative works allowed or mirroring of eprints in other
repositories without author's consent?
(5) Please note that commercial use (which is forbidden in Liege) is
not compatible with the BBB definition of OA.
The authoritative source for gratis/libre OA is
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-08.htm
"not all libre OA is BBB OA. For example, permitting all uses except
commercial use (the CC-NC license) and permitting all uses except
derivative works (the CC-ND license) are not equivalent to one another
and --ignoring certain subtleties-- not compatible with the BBB
definition."
There is no difference between BOAI and Berlin Definition of OA
regarding commercial use or derivative works. If Liege is referring to
BOAI commercial use has to be allowed.
(6) I cannot understand why Liege isn't using Creative Commons
licenses. They are clear and simple.
Klaus Graf
Received on Fri Jan 02 2009 - 22:21:41 GMT