Re: Sandboxes & copyrights

Many of the respondents to this thread seem to be saying roughly this:

The author holds the copyright and can assign this to the journal publisher (as is usually required by the journal). Open/shut.

A part of the complexity, to me, seems to stem from what may be the implicit or explicit assumptions underlying the "sandbox" by its participants. A group-ethic often exists (and is sometimes explicitly stated) that material distributed within the sandbox is freely redistributable (so long as attribution of authorship is maintained). In the case of a moderated group, it would be the responsibility of the moderator, it seems to ensure that the group ethic is known to new participlants, but my trouble with the above and the resultant interpretation are that

1. members of the sandbox may (following the norms of the group) re-distribute some of the material (with or without knowledge of the author), much as the reader of a newsgroup might forward an article to a colleague.
2. sometime later, a journal (with copyright granted by the author) may publish the thing.

The issue is much like a speech by a public official.... who owns the speech after a news organization has typed it onto a computer?

I would argue that the journal owns its particular expression of the document (its typesetting, its editing, its pagination, etc. as a particular compilation of a public event), as a derivative work.

The author and the group maintain copyright over the original expression in that particular tangible medium under whatever agreements originally existed within the sandbox. It is quite conceivable that another publisher could later make a second derivative work by re-editing and re-typesetting the original, under proper agreement by the holders of the original copyright.

Were the first journal to use its contract with the author as proof of infringement of copyright by the second publisher, it would be in error; it should instead pursue the author for breach of contract, since the author attempted to convey rights that he or she no longer held. Properly, it seems, the journal should remark that the article is derived from something previously published in the sandbox.

Similarly with Clinton's inaugural address: if I watch it on TV and type it into my computer, I own my own typing of it (complete with semi-colons, periods and other notation befitting my interpretation of Clinton's suprasegmental morphemes), but I do not own the speech, nor can I prevent someone else from typing it later on.

David Dailey
<David.P.Dailey[_at_]williams.edu> Received on Fri Feb 04 1994 - 21:15:52 GMT