I wrote:
>>Perhaps if individual copyright-owning authors who did not want their
>>articles to appear in databases notified the database vendors, the vendors,
>>being thus on notice that the particular pieces were unauthorized, might
>>have an obligation to remove those pieces from the database. But short of
>>that, it remains hard for me to see that IAC/Magazine Index owes Mr. Baker
>>or Ms. Jensen anything. Their complaint is with their publishers.
Mary Brandt Jensen wrote:
>I have done that and been told directly, by more than one vendor and
>licensing agency that they will not deal with me directly. They will
>only modify their records if they hear from the publisher (and only
>one went this far). That is like telling the victim of stolen goods
>that he can only have his goods back if he can get the thief to admit
>he took them.
<snip> I believe that
>sections 106 and 501 give copyright holders the right to pursue claims
>against both because the services are infringing by reproducing and
>distributing without lawful authority (flawed or unauthorized permission
>is not permission). In my case, this is more about respect for my work
>and respect for the law than it is about money and complaining to
>publishers. But I have complained and I have quit writing for both
>publishers who are abusing my copyrights.
I respect your desire to control your own work. And, as I've said, I think any database company or online vendor might have to remove articles if an author demonstrates that the publisher had no right to provide them. But insofar as you are not concerned about the money, I would think it would be to your advantage to have your articles in databases where more people will read them.
Actually collecting royalties would be an interesting problem, since there will frequently be two layers of "fences"--the database company and the online vendor. And I suspect that neither may have the capability, at least at present, to determine the royalties due on a particular article. That is, if I do a search in a file containing a bunch of journals, one of which has one of your articles in it, the current systems probably can't keep track of whether I read your article or not or even captured it to disk. Although I am sure it is or soon will be technically possible to do this, it makes much more sense to lay the responsiblity on the publisher to deal with electronic rights in the original contract. In fact, as I've been arguing, the online services believe that is already the case.
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