From: leo waaijers <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2018 10:24:39 +0100

Jim, you state “What is unclear is what remedies there might be at law in
the EU for such a condition.”



Well, remedying law is one option. The other one, much simpler, is a
forbidding authors to sign away the copyrights. For publishing an article
this is absolutely unnecessary. Such a measure would disown the publishers
of their copyright based monopoly and make them service providers instead
of copyright profiteers.



Leo Waaijers.






From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2018 17:30:33 -0700

Rick, there were two points that struck me as particularly well-made:

1.  They describe well and persuasively the de facto monopoly that
publishers hold over articles whose rights have been signed over to
them and make the point that this condition makes it effectively
impossible to create a fair market in such information.  (What is
unclear is what remedies there might be at law in the EU for such a
condition.  I assume there must be relevant parallels.)

2.  They also make the point that Elsevier and others are engaging in
vertical integration with anti-competitive results thus:  "Vertical
integration of services creates a ‘virtual lock in’ environment for
Elsevier’s customers and users, ensuring that its digital services
crowd out and exclude those of its competitors from the market. This
applies particularly to a range of downstream competitive services
within scholarly publishing and communication, and now represents the
ongoing concentration of scholarly infrastructures by Elsevier and a
small number of ‘competitors’."

I will just add that I well understand there will likely be response
on these points from Elsevier in the process that now opens.  My point
in the original posting was just to say that the document struck me as
thoughtful, well-argued, and unrhetorical.  I may have been influenced
by a recent viewing of a relevant film that struck me, apart from
contributions by Anderson and Watkinson, as deficient on all those
points.

Jim O'Donnell
ASU