Re: Re[2]: pictures in theses

You write:
>
>As a publisher I agree with Ken Crews response to Maryly Snow's
>question about the use of photographs in dissertations.
>
>The need to develop in students an awareness of intellectual property
>rights (including the moral right of attribution) early in their
>education is essential and will help to alleviate problems in their
>future publications.
>
>This is particularly important with dissertations from some foreign
>universities in which it is the practice to include the full text of
>articles that the student has published related to the dissertation
>topic.

This is only a problem if the author assigns copyright to the publisher which is not always the case. I have so far published four articles related to my dissertation (one of them in a Journal published in the US) and have not explicitly assigned copyright in any of them. Any licence or assignment that exists is inferred. I would argue that the strongest you can infer is that a licence is granted to the publisher to publish the article and to reproduce the article for the purposes of that publication. Inferring assignment of all exclusive rights is not reasonable. I still assert copyright over each of my articles.

Even if an assignment has taken place explicitly, the European position on author's moral rights would suggest that the author has a reasonable expectation that they can still reproduce the work which they have created. My own sense of justice is offended when an author is unable to reproduce their own work for limited, non-commercial purposes simnply because they have assigned commercial exploitation rights to someone else. (Its even offended by situations like a copyright owner being able to prevent Paul McCartney from performing his own songs which has happened but not in Europe.)

And then there is the fair use for research and study purposes which, despite the discussion I have seen here, I believe is satisfied by a thesis for the purposes of submission (as opposed to commercial or broader publication).

There are broader issues here than pure economic ones. Of course commercial publishers are most likely to emphasize these at the expense of other potentially overriding issues like facilitating the dissemination of learning and simple justice.

Tim Arnold-Moore      | CITRI, RMIT         | Uni. of Melbourne Law School
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