From: Laura Quilter <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 21:50:44 -0500 There are ways of copyright being wielded short of litigation, and I have seen many. And it's nice to believe that authors would rather not be bothered with the detail, but that's not really an ethical justification for the one-sided contacting that prevails in academic publishing. On Mar 8, 2016 12:03 AM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 00:42:14 -0600 > Subject: Re: SciHub > "Relieved" of copyright protection, seriously? I've never met a > scholar who published with a university press that would speak in > those terms. That smacks of coercion which, if actually present, > would invalidate a contract. > > The truth of the matter is that very few academic authors want to be > bothered with all the details that are involved in negotiating and > selling licenses for subsidiary uses. And few care to become experts > in knowing what kind of fees to set, what clauses to include in > licenses, how to defend themselves when license terms are violated, > etc. That is why, in academic publishing generally, "all rights" > transfers have been standard. Academic publishers have taken on the > burden of fulfilling the functions that in trade publishing are > handled by literary agents. Every academic contract I have seen > provides for splitting the income from subsidiary rights with authors, > usually 50/50 and, for some rights, 75/25 in favor of the author. > Authors are not forced to sign these contracts; they do so because > they don't want the responsibilities that come with handling > subsidiary rights. > > Also, in the relatively few cases where authors express an interest in > handling a specific subsidiary right, say, a translation into a > foreign language about which the author has some expertise, the > publisher generally cedes that right back to the author so that the > author can handle the transaction separately. > > You talk about copyright protection being wielded against authors. Can > you cite any examples of academic publishers suing their authors for > infringement of copyright? > > Sandy Thatcher