[Xmca-l] Re: Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate

[mike cole]

I'll cede expertise on the issues to you, Annalisa!
mike


On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 3:16 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

> Mike and Alfredo and beautiful readers and experienced thinkers,
>
>
>      Respectfully, I am gently pushing back that indeed this forum is a
> publishing model (of many possible models), because we are indeed making
> our writing public (which by the way has a similar word stem) by writing
> the posts we do to XMCA.
>
>      It is just that it is not the identical to the publishing model of
> Print, and so, we are essentially using an old word in a new way, but I
> would almost say its use is executed with a more faithful definition of the
> word "publish," as it is bypassing the process of the printing press with
> ink made from carbon and paper made from wood pulp, and its subsequent
> physical distribution through shipping to the reader and so on, which I
> imagine makes the rocks and trees happy, pixels being what they are.
>
>      I suggest this means we reacquaint ourselves to the true meaning of
> the word, and extricate ourselves as having a limited meaning of "publish"
> with print and paper, and try an association with The Act of making our
> words known publicly, even as we are our own editors to one another.
>
>      For the sake of this argument: didn't Martin Luther publish his
> theses when he nailed them to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg
> (on Oct 31 1517... hey that means the 500th anniversary of this event is in
> a few weeks, by golly)? This is not to note the content of the theses, but
> the act itself?
>
>
> According to Wikipedia, that well-published sage declares:
>
>
>      "The Latin Theses were printed in several locations in Germany in
> 1517. In January 1518 friends of Luther translated the Ninety-five Theses
> from Latin into German.Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread
> throughout Germany; within two months, they had spread throughout Europe."
>
>      Today this post will travel much faster than Martin Luther's Theses
> and to a larger world than his, but I feel he and I make the same gesture,
> we perform an act of speech, although in the form of text, publicly, with
> the intentions to better develop minds in our human society. Hope that that
> isn't too grandiose a statement to compare myself to Luther, but I think in
> some ways anyone who seeks interaction with others through writing, places
> us all on equal standing, and with the same potential of changing hearts
> and minds, as Luther did in his time. Really it depends upon the courage
> one has to speak one's mind and face the consequences of doing so, and not
> so much on whether a print publisher will object to lost revenue. Is that
> fair to say?
>      The pesky part with which we have to contend in this Internet age,
> are the middlemen, such as gatekeepers and lawyers. We also must consider
> what is intellectual property, which, to me, then funnels to the questions
> of copyright and fair use.
>      So that's the thread of my thinking on this.
>      I'm curious how these things were dealt with at the time of the
> invention of the Printing Press and how it was that attribution was
> "policed." Maybe someone has something historical to say about that?
>
>      I did also look at the wiki entry for Copyright - Fair Use and Fair
> Dealing and found there this text (here --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Copyright#Fair_use_and_fair_dealing )
>
>      "The statute does not clearly define fair use, but instead gives four
> non-exclusive factors to consider in a fair use analysis. Those factors are:
>
>   1.  the purpose and character of one's use
>   2.  the nature of the copyrighted work
>   3.  what amount and proportion of the whole work was taken, and
>   4.  the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the
> copyrighted work."
>
>      It seems to me if there is a way to justify, as has been shown in the
> music industry, that an artist or author can increase the "market for or
> value of the copyrighted work" by having a wider distribution, that will
> take care of #4. What academic does not want wider distribution? In my
> estimation, it is up to the print journals to figure out a way to innovate
> alongside or despite the distribution of digital media, instead of setting
> litigation fires against the distribution of journal articles as digital
> media. It seems that is what has happened in academic publishing.
>
>
> This putting the genie back in the bottle is foolish.
>
>
> The DMCA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)
> is one of many attempts to return the genie to the bottle, if it can be
> shown that "the manufacture, importation, or distribution of devices whose
> intended use, or only significant commercial use, is to bypass an access or
> copy control put in place by a copyright owner."
>
>
> If only the inventors of the internet could be shown to have intentions to
> bypass access of copy controls. Or inventors of magnetic tape for that
> matter. It just seems silly.
>
>
> So my question to Mike was asked with this in mind. Can it be said that as
> scholars sharing ideas  in peer review, which fulfills factors #1 and #2
> above for fair use, could indeed override factors #3 and #4 for fair use?
>
>
> For merits of argument only and respectfully asked, can't it be that
> posting a PDF of Cultural Psychology, by Mike Cole on the XMCA list, in its
> entirety, were it done in context of scholarly reference and for
> examination of its contents among a society of scholars, be enough of a
> safe threshold for fair use? Would it make Belknap Press (who published the
> print version of the book) or Mike be compelled sue the person who posted
> it? I don't know what that means, and it seems a grey area people don't
> really want to figure out.
>
>
> In that same thinking, is the threshold less so, the same, or more so for
> a published article? Or how about a draft of a paper?
>
> We are witnesses to the development of the Internet, which in the end
> bypasses the controls on copyright, and because it does, it seems we must
> then rely upon the factors of fair use. So I would think that posting the
> book in PDF online would be acceptable, as long as, if I were to post it, I
> was not saying I wrote the book, or that I wasn't selling the book to
> receive monetary gain, or that I wasn't intending to constrict the market
> in order to denigrate the book's value. Right?
>
> Thinking out loud, but I hope not too loudly.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Annalisa
>
>
>