From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2015 18:01:01 -0500

Kevin is evidently not aware that for most books they publish
university presses do pay royalties, just as commercial publishers do.

He also seems not to have read Robert Sproos's book titled "Without
Copyrights" (Oxford 2013) that shows that the language of piracy and
stealing was very
commonly used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in reference
to American publishers bringing out U.S. editions of foreign works
when there was no legal copyright protection for them at all. My use
of the word is much more literally true because I am talking about
actual copyright infringement if, say, libraries as publishers were to
issue POD editions of u-p ebooks posted under a CC-BY-ND-NC license,
which they might do to further the progress of knowledge while
denigrating all commercial interests.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 29 May 2015 12:17:30 +0000
>
> What is ridiculously overreaching is the use of the word "stealing"
> here.  It is an unfortunate fact that the legacy content industries
> often use the language of theft and stealing in a legally inaccurate
> way to create a moral panic.  But it is less appropriate around
> academic publishing than in almost any other context.
>
> We need to recall that academic publishers get the content they sell
> for free.  There is no other industry I know of that is allowed to
> sell, at monopoly prices, content for which they pay their suppliers
> nothing at all.  Scholarly publishing has had an incredibly privileged
> market position for years because what they supplied -- printing,
> binding and distribution -- was so costly and difficult.  But that
> market position has changed in the digital environment.  All that the
> quoted statement suggests is that we should ask if the value
> proposition still holds.  Are we getting a benefit that justifies the
> cost?  Clearly many people believe that we are not getting adequate
> benefit from the large commercial publishers.  The value proposition
> is different with non-profit university presses, but we are still
> entitled to inquire into it.
>
> To steal from a university press, in the proper legal sense, we would
> have to break into its offices and take away their computers, etc.,
> with the intent to permanently deprive the press of their use.  That
> would be the crime of theft.  To infringe a publishers copyright, we
> would have to use content over which they held a valid copyright in an
> unauthorized way.  That would be the tort of infringement -- a civil
> wrong -- but not theft or stealing.  But to decide that a particular
> press is not giving value that justifies the cost -- to decide not to
> give that press content over which I am the legitimate copyright
> holder -- that is just a business decision.  Presses are not entitled
> to the works of any author; they must compete, at least a little bit,
> to show that they deliver value.  To shout theft just because someone
> says that they do not believe the value is there is truly ridiculous
> overreaching.
>
> Kevin L. Smith
> Director, Copyright & Scholarly Communication
> Duke University Libraries