Re: Garfield: "Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not Prior Publication"

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Stevan Harnad <harnad[_at_]ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> As I said, call it whatever you like. The texts of peer-reviewed
> research publications are author give-aways, but their authorship and
> their textual integrity are not.

Sure, you can call it whatever you like but this is not going to make the discussion more clear. Your indifference to the subtle differences between copyright infringement and plagiarism is the reason why you don't understand how the U.S. Copyright Law works.

> Currently, copyright law is doing double duty, (1) protecting
> copyright-holders from users who would make copies of their texts without
> paying for them (give-away authors do not want this protection) and
> (2) protecting copyright-holders from users who would make corrupted
> copies of their texts (including copies in which someone else is listed
> as the author). Almost all authors still want protection from the
> latter.
>
> To this layman, therefore, it looks clear that PostGutenberg copyright
> protection has to be split (into at least two parts). For non-giveaway
> texts it must forbid (1) and (2), and for give-away texts it must forbid
> (2) but not (1).

As I explained in your discussion group (SEPTEMBER98-FORUM) last year, the U.S. Copyright Law does not grant the rights of attribution and integrity to authors except visual artists. In the U.S., the authors do not have all protection in the second part.

> I repeat (though you say it is irrelevant), that your own solution of
> putting the text in the public domain does not work for the give-away
> authors of refereed research -- though it may work for other kinds of
> give-away authors -- because it allows (1) but it also allows (2).

You got the wrong impression from me. My suggestion of putting a work in the public domain is not suitable for authors who want to retain their credit in their articles and/or do not want anyone to edit their articles without permission from them. Because you are very obsessive with attribution and integrity, putting your work in the public domain definitely is not for you.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 5,957

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Mon Sep 09 2002 - 22:26:21 GMT