RE: NIH issues

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

And nothing in the Conyers bill would in any way prevent this 
practice of the NSF from being used by the NIH either. The nub of 
the issue, as Scott has noted, is the preemption by the 
government of "value added" for which it has not paid.

Kevin may be right on the copyright issue in the context of the 
Conyers bill as it pertains to the NIH, but he is not right as it 
pertains to other proposed actions of the government, including 
the one that worries university presses the most: the proposal to 
appropriate the published editions of the papers of the Founding 
Fathers and put them online, with no compensation to the presses 
that have invested their own time, money, and effort in producing 
these scrupulously edited editions. Quite clearly, the texts of 
these editions are in the public domain, but the critical 
editorial apparatus is not and it is protected by copyright. 
Under the terms of the Conyers bill, these are "extrinsic works." 
There is nothing to prevent the government from posting 
transcriptions of the texts online, of course, but what right 
does the government have to appropriate the "value added" by the 
publishers--introductions, notes, etc.? Some of the editorial 
work is funded by the government, but not by any means all of it, 
as private foundation money as well as the funds of presses 
themselves go into producing these editions.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>The hypothetical situation Joe describes is exactly what the NSF
>does - after discussion with many parties, including publishers
>and their organizations, they concluded that it was neither
>necessary, nor fair to publishers, to post actual journal
>articles
>
>Sally Morris
>Email: sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>