Copyright transfers? (take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

TechComm Dood responded to my comments about copyright transfers:

<<[nonprofit publishers barely make enough money to cover their costs, 
they can't afford to pay authors] Cry me a river.>>

Boo hoo. <g> Nonetheless, I'm sympathetic to the nonprofits: they serve 
a very important role in disseminating information inexpensively. 
Compare the nonprofit prices with the prices of Elsevier and Kluwer 
journals, for instance, and you'll see what I mean.

<<[it would be prohibitively difficult to keep contacting the author to 
ask for permission each time.] So pay the author and be done with it.>>

There are actually efforts underway to do exactly this; for example, 
Access Copyright (formerly CanCopy) fills this role for members by 
acting as their agent to claim royalties from governments, 
universities, and other places where articles are frequently copied 
without the author's knowledge. We'll see this kind of thing expand in 
the future, particularly as e-payment services (such as PayPal) become 
more widespread and less expensive. There have been several efforts in 
the past to facilitate "micropayments" (small, per-use fees). They've 
all failed, but the infrastructure is becoming sufficiently pervasive 
and advanced that they'll soon be possible.

In the meantime, there's a sense of community involved in the free 
dissemination of information. Abstracting journals, for example, 
provide an extremely valuable service to those who use them. In 
exchange for this service, the users are generally quite happy to have 
their own material included in the journals without a special request 
for permission and without  payment. There's a long and proud academic 
tradition of publishing information for the betterment of mankind, and 
assigning rights is one of the consequences of this tradition. I can 
live with that.

<<You have no idea what a mess [copyright releases] can be. In this 
case, lawyers are worth every penny.>>

If they would produce a standard contract that protected the rights of 
the publisher without screwing the author, I'd agree fully with you. 
If, instead, the law is designed to ensure a lucrative retirement fund 
for lawyers, color me skeptical.

<<Why can't the author grant the STC a non-exclusive royalty-free 
licence instead, then?>>

In fact, that's precisely what I've done in the past with journal 
publishers, and they've been happy to accept this arrangement. Now that 
you mention it, I'll pass that suggestion along to STC and suggest that 
they look long and hard at it.

I also recommended publishing an article on your own Web site before 
you submit it to a conference proceedings or journal, thereby securing 
copyright to the specific version that you published: <<That can still 
get sticky, but more times than not that'll work.>>

Sticky indeed, but the key is that you fix the article in tangible 
form. This is arguably achieved as soon as you save it to your hard 
disk, but formal publication (note the "public" part <g>) establishes a 
much clearer precedent.

<<I gave up on presenting at conferences. Even the paid ones were still 
expensive to do.>>

I treat conferences as a guilty indulgence, where I go to learn new 
things (which I could do from reading the proceedings) and to meet 
people. The latter is something that really requires being there in 
person. I meet people I only get to see in person every few years, meet 
new people who become long-term friends, and can ask questions of the 
authors interactively, which is much more difficult via e-mail.

<<I can see why these consultants don't often present at the STC 
conferences... they need to make money.>>

Yup. You have to be making a very comfortable living to be able to 
afford the lost billing hours and the time devoted to preparing a 
professional presentation.

<<Therefore they look to be conpensated for their time, which the STC 
doesn't do beyond a reduced entry fee.>>

I have to admit, this is one of the things I've lobbied to change over 
the years. At a minimum, presenters should get a free pass, which is 
probably a reasonable compromise for STC given (a) the negligible 
profit margin for a typical STC conference and (b) the low registration 
fee compared with many other conferences.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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