[GOAL] Re: Status of OUP/ESA copyrights on PDF files of journal articles that were never copyrighted

[Heather Morrison]

This is an important question. 

Here is a related question: can third parties that were never involved in the creation of a work, either directly or through an agreed copyright transfer from the creator, claim copyright based on technological manipulation of copyrighted works? If not now, will we see this in the future?

Industry moves in this direction have been in the works for many years. One example is the WIPO Broadcasting Treaty (draft). As the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains it, "If adopted, the WIPO treaty will give broadcasters 50 years of copyright-like control over the content of their broadcasts even when they have no copyright in what they show. A TV channel broadcasting your Creative Commons-licensed movie could legally demand that no one record or redistribute it—and sue anyone who does…(and) If that wasn't bad enough, some countries at WIPO have supported expanding the treaty to cover the Internet”. (from: https://www.eff.org/issues/wipo-broadcasting-treaty)

If this kind of copyright maximalism prevails, it is possible that all of the works the OA movement has made available for free could end up under the control of third parties such as internet service providers. 

I argue that we need to understand and advocate for good public policy to support a sustainable open access knowledge commons. This includes an open, neutral internet and fair and balanced copyright. On these issues, it makes sense to work with like-minded groups such as Electronic Frontier Foundation (to name but one - there are many). 


best,

Heather 


> On Jan 10, 2016, at 4:11 PM, Walker,Thomas J <tjw at ufl.edu> wrote:
> 
>  
> I am trying to understand the business plan that Oxford University Press (OUP) has for the subscription journals of the Entomological Society of America (ESA).  In doing so,  I found notices of copyright on abstracts of ESA articles from 1908 forward.  For example, see this abstract of an article published in 1908 in ESA’s Annals: http://aesa.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/3/179​.
>  
> You will see under the title of the article a DOI followed by “First published online: 1 September 1908”, a claim that is difficult to square with the history of the internet.
>  
> ·         Beneath the abstract is this claim to copyright: “© 1908 Entomological Society of America.”
>  
> Question:
>  
> Do those who make PDFs of journal articles that were never copyrighted have a valid claim to a copyright of their PDF of the article?
>  
> Tom
> ============================================
> Thomas J. Walker 
> Department of Entomology & Nematology 
> PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive) 
> University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
> E-mail: tjw at ufl.edu     FAX: (352)392-0190
> Web: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/
> ============================================
>  
>  
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-- 
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca