[Taxacom] ICZN position on Darwinius

[Doug Yanega]

Rich Pyle wrote:

>As a follow-up to Ellinor's post (by the way, she is the Executive
>Secretary, not the President),

Apologies for forgetting the correct honorific there.

>I also posted two comments to the same blog
>(#54 & #56) -- which I will not repeat here; except to summarize that Art.
>8.6 is not relevant in this case (see my comment #54 on the blog).
>[snip]
>I think Neal Evenhuis got it right in his posts to this thread (and not just
>'cause he's my boss!).  From the perspective of the Code, the electronic
>versions SIMPLY DO NOT EXIST!

So, the name as it appeared on the web on May 19th was unavailable, 
but not for the reason that people (myself included) initially 
objected. That doesn't emerge from reading article 8.6 by itself, but 
only by linking 8.1 and 8.6 together (i.e., the existence of "durable 
copies" is a *prerequisite* for 8.6 to apply to a work). The point 
about PLoS publishing ant names with a clause to satisfy 8.6 was also 
a red herring. Article 9.8 is what folks should have been pointing to 
all along. I fell into the same trap because the first objection I 
saw anyone mention was 8.6 (and even Neal didn't mention 9.8 either).

Given all this, then I do actually have one more question, and it's 
not just to be difficult, but to truly, fully, understand how these 
parts of the Code are supposed to work and be applied in the present 
case:

Why, exactly, does Article 9.7 *NOT* now apply to the copies that 
PLoS printed today and is making available?

Art. 9.7 excludes "copies obtained on demand of an unpublished work 
[Art. 8]" - the work was, following 8.1, technically unpublished - 
and there is no glossary definition of "on demand", so is this not 
potentially open to interpretation? Using the dreaded Wikipedia as a 
typical definition:

Print on demand (POD), sometimes called publish on demand, is a 
printing technology and business process in which new copies of a 
book (or other document) are not printed until an order has been 
received.

Copies of the document in question were not printed until PLoS was 
advised by the ICZN that they needed to print copies to make the 
names available. Apparently these could be considered "copies 
obtained on demand" (it would not appear relevant that the number of 
copies produced was greater than one; nothing in any definition I 
could see for "print on demand" implied that it *only* applies if 
copies are produced singly). I don't think we can make the convoluted 
implication that 9.7 refers *only* to "unpublished works" that 
already exist on durable media, and are considered unpublished for 
some *other* reason.

About the only thing I can figure is that if PLoS says no more copies 
will *ever* be produced, then they can claim they are *not* printing 
on demand - but if playing around with how one defines "on demand" is 
the only way to exclude these copies from falling under 9.7, isn't 
that really, really tenuous?

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82