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