[GOAL] Re: One way to expand the OA movement: be more inclusive

[Heather Morrison]

On 2015-06-01, at 4:17 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
 wrote:

> 
> Please accept that posting on the web, with whatever good intentions but without explicit licence, gives no rights to any potential user.

Good grief, no, I accept no such thing. You sound like a copyright maximalist here, PMR. 

We need to understand that posting on the web means that you are automating giving people certain permissions, e.g. to read, copy, crawl, unless you have put up explicit barriers. This is not something to be taken for granted, rather an obvious right to fight for in copyright law. Precisely what permissions is not something we need to figure out exactly in advance. Norms can evolve based on what people do, what they like and dislike. 

> 
> A CC BY document, with only one copy behind the LIcensor's firewall is not accessible and is therefore operationally closed. If one copy is published, then it can be copied and cannot be revoked by the licensor. 

Agreed. CC-BY does not necessarily mean open access. A CC-BY license can be applied to a work that is never shared with anyone at all. A CC-BY license can be put on a work with technological protection measures that prevent people from actually using the rights granted. CC-BY is not sufficient for open access. 

> 
> the legality of search engines is unclear in many cases.

If you would avoid data or text mining my blog because of legal uncertainty, shall I assume that you are avoiding search engines as well? If not, this is a contradiction.

Thank you for acknowledging that the UK has changed its laws to facilitate data and text mining. 

best,

Heather