Re: John Wiley on RoMEO and John the Baptist on Supererogation

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:12:57 -0500

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Talat Chaudhri
<t.chaudhri_at_ukoln.ac.uk> wrote (on JISC-REPOSITORIES):

      Clearly the copyright system is incoherent and difficult,
      but nonetheless these publishers have indisputable
      copyright and may licence it as they please, even
      incoherently. 


Even incoherently? I think Talat underestimates the supra-legal power
of the Law of the Excluded Middle.

Example:

      "You may deposit this article on the web if you have a
      blue-eyed maternal uncle AND you may not deposit this
      article on the web if you have a blue-eyed maternal
      uncle."


Unverifiable, unenforcable, and incoherent. But Talat feels it would
be "frankly inappropriate to tell others to break the law at their
own risk" by ignoring something like this.

There's no accounting for feelings.

Be sensible (as the half-million physicists and three-quarter million
computer scientists have been, for two decades now): Take the "risk."

Stevan
Received on Tue Feb 17 2009 - 13:13:57 GMT