[BOAI] Re: CC-By versus CC-other (was Re: Re: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster ...)

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

Something that seems to be under-appreciated is that the CC-by has a strong requirement that there be attribution in a form approved by the copyright owner (i.e., "you").  

I am not clear how this works in material that is "camera ready" in a form required for the intended place of publication, when what you may want is an attribution that is assured to allow recipients to find and access the original work as archived.  Where it is under my control, I require an attribution that is sufficiently precise that the original work (in an accessible repository) can be located and accessed.

CC-by also has a built-in trip-wire on republication under DRM that fails to provide access to the specified non-DRM original source.

The only example I can think of where commercial republication was particularly viable has to do with Public Domain works of governments that folks reprint (e.g., as guides to tax regulations in the US) pretty much wholesale.  The Internet may have undermined that business model.

I'm associated with a couple of open-source software projects that have millions of users, and there are organizations or individuals that repackage and resell the material, often in a convenient form (such as mailed Compact Discs) that the projects do not provide.  When folks submit support issues and trouble reports, we simply ascertain that they are using an authentic distribution from the project. The common licenses place no restriction on commercial redistribution and some very successful projects allow commercial reuse with attribution but no Share Alike of any sort. 

It's not clear to me what the appeal is for commercial actors of scholarly/academic/research publications under CC-by.  Plagiarism might be a greater concern these days.  In that case it doesn't matter what the license is if there is open access to such treasure.

And, in the case of all forms of CC license, it may come down to how far is one willing to go to deal with infractions, and what are the likely prospects for much success.  


 -- Dennis E. Hamilton
    dennis.hamilton at acm.org    +1-206-779-9430
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-----Original Message-----
From: boai-forum-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:boai-forum-bounces at ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Andras Holl
Sent: Monday, September 1, 2014 12:09
To: boai-forum at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Subject: [BOAI] Re: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster, Coordinator of Scholarly Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln


What re-use means for scholarly journal articles? Right to re-print?
Right to re-distribute? These are unnecessary. We need access rights
and data mining rights.

Re-use is meaningful for research data, for figures, but not for
articles. The information in the articles could be re-used, we need
no special rights for that. Articles could be used for scientific,
educational purposes, that is granted by fair use. Excerpts could be
cited. And why redistribute, if the article is freely available?

Andras Holl


On Mon, 1 Sep 2014 12:52:57 -0400, Stevan Harnad wrote
> On Sep 1, 2014, at 11:19 AM, Stephen Downes <stephen at DOWNES.CA> wrote:
> 
> > Some really important discussion here. In particular, I would argue (with 
this article) that  the insistence on CC-by (which allows commercial reuse) 
comes not from actual proponents of open access, but by commercial publishers 
promoting their own interests. http://www.downes.ca/post/62708

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