Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2015 11:31:42 +0000

Terrific, Ivy.  Thank you for taking the time to clarify the intent of the clause in the model license.

Overall, I thank everyone who has participated in the discussion of TDM on this listserv. The discussion was fruitful and informative for me, and (I suspect) educational for TDM content providers subscribed to the forum.

Denise

-----Original Message-----
From: Ivy Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2015 04:35:14 +0000

Denise,

I am with you.  That clause was not intended to allow providers to charge for a TDM as a service – the costs envisioned in the LibLicense clause are only for preparation of media.  If one is asking for *delivery* of files (e.g. on physical media), or for files to be prepared in a particular format for a specific use, there is arguably some modest cost to prepare and deliver files in that way.  This is the only type of cost envisioned by the LibLicense clause – it was not at all intended to allow or encourage providers to charge for the content, much less for TDM services per se.  In fact the intent is completely the opposite - the content has already been licensed, so there should be no costs other than to extract files and ship them (or make them available via ftp, which should involve less or even no cost).   There should be no question of purchasing content.  We were trying to recognize that there could be modest additional costs associated with file preparation and delivery, but that any costs would be limited to that.  And if TDM is being performed directly against the database itself, there should be no such cost at all.

Perhaps the language could be made clearer on this point, but that is definitely the intent.  If ProQuest or other providers are asking for exorbitant funds simply to extract and supply files, that seems patently ridiculous.  I would question what costs they claim to be recovering.

best

Ivy