From: Bob Persing <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2013 09:17:11 -0500 On 12/10/2013 1:00 AM, LIBLICENSE-L automatic digest system wrote: > > Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2013 15:40:57 -0500 > From: LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> > Subject: Re: Elsevier's Unforced Error > > From: "Pikas, Christina K." <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2013 09:49:22 -0500 > > At the risk of coming off as an Elsevier defender.... I'd like to make > some points in response: > > 1) Academia.edu is a private company running on venture capital - > presumably they aspire to make money on the content that users upload > > 2) Authors signed a legal agreement with the publisher to transfer > copyright. (many would argue that they shouldn't have, but they did, > or they wouldn't have been published) I think this is too broad a statement, at least in the case of Elsevier. I wrote several articles for an Elsevier journal in the early 2000s. At that time, they routinely sent authors a Transfer of Copyright form, and a cover letter which read in part: "If we do not hear from you by return, the article will carry a line in place of the copyright line merely indicating that Elsevier published the article." I never signed or returned any of the copyright forms. Yet every one of the articles, when published, included the line: "© 200[x] Elsevier Science, Inc." If one of these articles was offered by a company like academia.edu, would Elsevier have the legal right to send them a takedown notice? I don't know. A court might say that since I didn't protest against the copyright statements when they were published, I tacitly agreed to them. Whether they would or not, though, I think the question is less obvious than it's been represented. Bob Persing Univ. of PA Library