[open-science] SPARC author addendum uses CC-NC licence and now all hybrid publishers have followed

Mon Dec 12 03:36:47 UTC 2011

On Sun, 11 Dec 2011, Heather Morrison wrote:

> Two comments (capitals are just a formatting thing, I'm not angry!)
>
> COPYRIGHT DOES NOT COVER IDEAS
>
> It sounds to me like you are making a common mistake, assuming that copyright 
> applies to ideas. Please correct me if I am wrong about this.

I'm well aware copyright law isn't intended to apply to ideas.  The intent 
of my remark was to summarize part of the reason I am broadly in favour of 
the general principle that publicly funded science should be open science. 
The use of non-NC licenses seems to me to follow as a very specific 
instance of this broad general principle.  I hope that clarifies the 
intent of my remarks.

> PRIVATE GAIN AS BROADER COMMONS
>
> It sounds to me like you are saying that  commercial products "benefits the 
> broader public" and is a "broader commons". Is this what you meant to say? If 
> so, I have some further questions for you...

I certainly believe that many commercial products benefit the broader 
public.  On the other hand, I don't believe that most (there are some 
exceptions) commercial products are part of a broader commons, although of 
course they do build on a broad background commons of basic scientific 
research.

Michael