Re: [CNI-COPYRIGHT] Re: "Do not sell to schools" and copyright

Thursday, April 3, 2003, 9:42:35 PM, you wrote:

TO> judges aren't going to like that.  Remember, the publisher figures that
TO> a library copy is going to be read by at least ten people, so it's fair
TO> to charge ten times as much.  My guess is that a lot of judges would
TO> agree with that, even though the legal basis is tenuous.

And of course for highly specialized scholarly journals it may not be read by ANYONE during a year, or even many years. Most highly specialized journals are subscribed to for the benefit of one or two faculty members, and for visibility to the accreditation team.

TO> In light of the uncertainty in how the law would be applied, I think it
TO> is risk-aversion, as much as anything else, that keeps libraries from
TO> challenging publishers' practices in this regard.

I'd say that rather than risk aversion it is lack of funding to start down such a path. Not many institutions would commit their resources to something that has no clear outcome but major expenses. In addition, as others have pointed out, even if you win, the price might not go down much, if any, as the majority of the income of the major STM (Science, Technical, Medical) publishers comes from libraries.

TO> No one wants to be
TO> the test case.  But without a test case, it will be difficult to get a
TO> clear answer to your question.

This is correct, of course. But don't most such test cases come up when the state or the company sues the "little guy" or "the university"? And most of them don't have the money or inclination to fight.

cheers

dan (son of a Whittier non-law grad)

-- 
Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan[_at_]RiverOfData.com 208-283-7711
3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA
www.riverofdata.com  Have you forgotten 9/11?