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

Mon Dec 12 04:43:49 UTC 2011

Comment and question for Michael below - best, heater

On 11-Dec-11, at 7:36 PM, Michael Nielsen wrote:

>
>
> 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.

Comment: this does clarify your intent - and it is a noble intent -  
with respect to this one issue. I don't agree that the one follows  
from the other, except in a simplistic sense.

Question for you: your comments here are on publicly funded science.  
The discussion on the list has been about scholarly publishing CC  
licensing in general - what I understand as a plan to pressure all OA  
publishers to adopt CC-BY licenses, as well as about eliminating the  
NC option from CC licensing. Can you comment on these two broader  
issues? Do you have an intent here, and if so, what is it?

>
>> 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