From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2013 03:08:27 +0000

Perhaps as fallout on unsigned and unrecoverable copyright transfers,
a number of publishers are trying in their licenses with libraries to
get an "acknowledgment that publisher owns copyright" of the licensed
material. At UNC Charlotte we do not "acknowledge" what we do not in
fact know.

This is one of those areas.

If the publisher gets  written acknowledgment in a license that they
are the copyright owners, well, game over if we ever get to court. No
proof of ownership necessary.

Several major international publishers have tried this little bit of
let's make the  elephant in the house disappear routine with such
clauses and the most we will do is acknowledge that they "state" the
content is proprietary. There is no way we can "know" it is all
copyrighted and owned by  the publishing house.

I wish publishers would quit their little  gotcha contract traps with
libraries. But that would mean sales would have to read and understand
the outrageous stuff their lawyers put into these contracts. And who
do we get when we raise issues with contract language? Quite often the
lawyer that wrote it in the first place.

Chuck Hamaker
UNC Charlotte

________________________________________

From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:17:34 +0000

It has surprised me over the years that quite a number of academic authors
I have spoken to assert that they have never signed, and sometimes never
been asked to sign, a copyright transfer agreement.  Some of those
assertions may simply be failures of recall.  But given the significant
number of items for which the plaintiffs in the Georgia State case were
unable to prove copyright assignment, even with years of preparation, it
seems very likely that there are other cases where the authors have
retained copyright.  I would have to review the specifics of the DMCA
takedown procedure, but I wonder if Academia.edu is entitled to ask for
evidence that the entity sending the demand is entitled to do so before
they comply.

Kevin

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications
Duke University Libraries
Durham, NC 27708
[log in to unmask]



On 12/13/13 8:22 AM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>From: Jennifer Howard <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 03:02:04 +0000
>
>Perhaps Alicia Wise could comment on this from Elsevier's perspective.
>
>Best,
>
>Jennifer Howard
>
>Sent from my iPhone
>
>On Dec 12, 2013, at 9:42 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> From: Laura Quilter <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 20:51:50 -0500
>>
>> You have to sign in writing a transfer of copyright in the US.  So,
>> Elsevier's copyright statement on your articles is what some have
>> termed "copyfraud".  They certainly don't have the right to "enforce"
>> your copyright, and if they try to do so, you should push back --
>> and hopefully make this widely-known!
>>
>> I suspect, actually, that a significant fraction of the so-called
>> copyright holdings of large academic publishers can't actually be
>> documented, and thus really belongs to the original authors, under
>> US law.  Sadly there's probably no way to actually figure out the
>> numbers for this.
>>
>> Laura