[GOAL] Re: CC-BY and - or versus - open access

[Matthew Cockerill]

I do feel that this is rather like complaining that the CC-BY license doesn't make toast, and nor does it act as a particularly effective floor-polish.
Yes, ensuring digital permanence and long term open access depends on many things - licensing is only one of those things. Archiving is another.
But as a licenses go, CC-BY has proven to be a hugely effective enabler of OA and digital permanence, and I think is pretty much as effective as any license can be in that regard.

Matt


-----Original Message-----
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2012 5:28 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: CC-BY and - or versus - open access

Thanks, Marc and Jan.

I'd like to repeat this for emphasis, from the CC-BY legal code thanks to Marc: "Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time".

Comment: a publisher can publish a work as CC-BY (which does not require open access), then change license terms or simply stop redistributing the work at any time. If someone has a copy of the work while distributed as CC-BY, then they can make this open access. However, this only works if someone does have a copy and the means and will to redistribute for open access. This is why a CC-BY licensed article disseminated via one (or preferably more) open access archives is a much more secure situation for open access than publishing CC-BY.

best,

Heather Morrison

On 2012-08-22, at 8:47 AM, Couture Marc wrote:

> Jan Velterop wrote:
> 
>> 
>> a (c) licence can only ever be changed from less open/less liberal to 
>> more open/more liberal; otherwise the user/reader can always claim to 
>> have read/used/distributed under the previous licence or not being 
>> aware of the new licence.
>> 
> 
> I completely agree. And the user would not even have to claim ignorance of a new licence. As I pointed out before, CC licences' legal code states that they are "perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright)", and that should the copyright holder change the licence terms at some time, the original licence would remain in force:
> 
> "[...] Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this License), and this License will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above [i.e. in case of a breach of the terms of the licence by the user (section 7a)]."
> 
> (CC Attribution 3.0 Unported legal code, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode, section 7b).
> 
> Marc Couture
> 
> 
> 
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