Should Copyright Be Abolished On Academic Work?

[ahi]

Oh noes!

Should Copyright Be Abolished On Academic Work? (also: full PDF)

If they do abolish it, surely in a matter of years all science and human progress will grind to a complete halt!!! Yarrr, I say!

- Ahi

[Jaime_Astorga]

Sure, why not. Journal articles aren't submitted by their writers for profit, and when they invent a method which can be commercialized that is capitalized upon in the form of patents, not copyright.

[Penforhire]

Hmm, not sure about the direct effect but plenty of journals I read have advertisements in them and might not survive if the contents were all public domain.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Hmm, not sure about the direct effect but plenty of journals I read have advertisements in them and might not survive if the contents were all public domain.

The author of the paper agrees with you, I think:

The abstract:

The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem. Yet publishers would presumably have to impose fees on authors, because publishers would not be able to profit from reader charges. If these publication fees would be borne by academics, their incentives to publish would be reduced. But if the publication fees would usually be paid by universities or grantors, the motive of academics to publish would be unlikely to decrease (and could actually increase) – suggesting that ending academic copyright would be socially desirable in view of the broad benefits of a copyright-free world. If so, the demise of academic copyright should be achieved by a change in law, for the ‘open access’ movement that effectively seeks this objective without modification of the law faces fundamental difficulties.

[RWood]

Most academic copyrights I have seen are held by the universities of the boards of the universities, not by the writers.

[corroonb]

Most academics make almost nothing from writing so I'm sure most wouldn't object.

I think something should also be done about the price of textbooks but that's another issue.

[Elfwreck]

Abolishing copyright on "academic works" would not be a simple legal change.

First, "academic works" would have to be defined. Currently, there's no legal definition for peer-reviewed academic works; any group can start up an academic journal, and announce "we are qualified because of X, Y & Z to present expert papers on our topic of choice." Changing the laws so that all such journals would also have to announce, "submissions we publish immediately enter the public domain, and anyone can reprint them at a profit," would substantially alter who is willing to submit.

Anyone who thinks his academic research might be a good book topic would refrain from journal publication. Except that the paper seems to think those books would also be in the public domain--that all academic content would be exempt from copyright. I cannot imagine what nightmare of definitions games would result from an attempt to promote this idea in a legal venue.

I haven't finished reading the paper, but it seems to consider copyright-of-academic-works in a vacuum, without regard to the larger copyright world in which everything else is protected by copyright law.

The author seems to have some misunderstandings about copyright.

Moreover, copyright protection is significantly incomplete for articles. Journals are increasingly allowing free downloading of their articles from the Internet, at least after a window of time following publication.

It implies that a journal that permits copies is failing to protect them to the full extent copyright law allows--as if copyright law's only purpose were to prevent free copies.

Books seem to enjoy greater effective copyright protection than articles. Academic books published under copyright today are not usually available in electronic form, even though publishing practices are changing.

And the author doesn't acknowledge the existence of Creative Commons--in one place, it mentions "Open access journals generally do not copyright their works," and gives as an example the Public Library of Science. But its website is under a CC 2.5 Attribution license.

I intend to read it completely, but with so many errors in its assumptions about copyright, I'm not expecing to be wow'd by the conclusions.

[ahi]

I think the specifics have much to improve, though perhaps that can be blamed on this being a draft.

The broader points/suggestions are more worth consideration.

... except, of course, for the fact that they would be certain to cause human civilization to collapse altogether--in exactly the same way that music and video piracy already destroyed the music and the movie industries.

- Ahi

[zerospinboson]

Another point to consider: Certain Academic printing presses (OUP chief among them) make decent profits which they then "donate" to the mother university so that Oxford can build/buy new stuff. This is a fairly substantial source of 'income' for OU, and I expect something similar applies to other universities..

[Hellmark]

Having it be public domain doesn't mean that it still cannot be charged for. Look at the classics, plenty of people still charging for those. Printing, distribution, etc all still cost money. Also, if they were public domain automatically, fewer people would be interested, since others could come along, take their stuff, claim it as their own, and they would have no legal protection to stop that.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Having it be public domain doesn't mean that it still cannot be charged for. Look at the classics, plenty of people still charging for those. Printing, distribution, etc all still cost money. Also, if they were public domain automatically, fewer people would be interested, since others could come along, take their stuff, claim it as their own, and they would have no legal protection to stop that.

That is why the creative commons license is usually much better.

Dale