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