[GOAL] Re: OASPA Adds Licensing FAQs Page to Information Resources

[Couture Marc]

About the display in some journal home pages of both a CC- License and an "All rights reserved" statement, Alicia Keys wrote:

>
> One set of licensing terms applies to their generic web content, and the other to specific 
> articles that are surfaced via that website.  This isn't a conflict in licensing terms as different 
> things are being licensed, although the presentation could perhaps be a bit clearer.
>

Quite an understatement! One wonders if this kind of confusion is deliberate, or simply evidence that copyright matters are not taken seriously enough by (some) publishers.

For the previous example provided by Jeffrey (IJSAT's Terms of Use), I should have quoted the first part in its integrity. It reads: "IJSAT's Web site and all of its materials, including, but not limited to, its software or HTML code, scripts, text, artwork, photographs, images, video, and audio (collectively, "Materials") ...  are protected ..."

To me, it's no instance of "unclear presentation": How can one think that it such an encompassing definition of "materials" exclude the articles?

Without being too technical, I must point out that even the "serious publishers" I mentioned could be "perhaps a bit clearer" in their presentation. For instance, BioMed Central uses a licence which seems to be both identical... and different form the CC-BY license: the legal code (which is mainly intended to be read and understood by lawyers) is the same, but the simple-language explanations for laypersons are a little bit different...

Anyway, an advantage (for us) of this kind of fuzziness (laziness?) is that it allows us, in good faith, to choose the more favorable interpretation.

Marc Couture