From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2013 09:06:07 -0600 Good questions, Jim! One would hope that the answer to your first question is yes, particularly if and when Cambridge follows the practice of some other university presses in omitting parts of a book from the print edition and including it instead only at a website, as this Stanford book did with its lengthy 41-page bibliography: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=4495 To your second question i would answer perhaps, but the idea is appearing with increasing frequency. A new book about the Kennedy assassination by James Reston, Jr. titled "The Accidental Victim" published by Zola Books in 2013 has this notice on the copyright page: "The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher." Perhaps some lawyers got into the act here and urged inclusion of this kind of statement to avoid liability, making this a counterpart to product liability disclaimers? The Reston book also includes this notice right after the standard copyright notice: "All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [log in to unmask] Thank you for your support of the author's rights." Well, one wonders, what about the users' rights, recognized in the Copyright Act in Section 107 (fair use), among other places? While citing the Act (for which it uses lower case), this statement completely ignores the range of exemptions built into the Act. Well over three decades ago, as chair of the AAUP Copyright Committee, I went on a campaign to try persuading university presses to eschew such "ad terrorem" notices (as L. Ray Patterson, progenitor of the original Georgia Board of Regents policy that was the subject of the suit brought against GSU, used to call them), but had little success, as many publishers (including many university presses) still use them today. It should be embarrassing to publishers that they don't know the law any better than this. Professor Patterson, indeed, in testifying before the Georgia House in the early 1980s, said: "Publishers often disregard the right of fair use and act as if it did not exist. Many books, for example, contain a statement such as this . . ." and goes on to cite another version of this notice. It is just plain dumb for publishers to continue this practice. If a publisher still wants to do this, I prefer the following wording, which actually appeared in a book published in 1973: "We have gone to considerable difficulty and expense to assemble a staff of necromancers, sorcerers, shamans, conjurers, and lawyers to visit nettlesome and mystifying discomforts on any ninny who endeavors to reproduce or transmit this book in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission from the publisher. Watch yourself!" Sandy Thatcher At 12:47 PM -0500 12/4/13, LIBLICENSE wrote: > From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2013 14:58:20 -0500 > >> From a new scholarly book (2011) from Cambridge University Press, at > > the foot of the copyright page: > > "Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence > or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites > referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any > content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate." > > (1) Do they imply they *do* guarantee persistence and accuracy of > their own websites that may be referenced? > > (2) Does this not belabor the obvious? Where in the Press hierarchy > did this idea come from and to whom did it seem a good idea? > > Jim O'Donnell > Georgetown U.