[Taxacom] copyright infringement by "Nabu Press"?

[Doug Yanega]

Stephen wrote:

>note that the book is available freely on BHL: 
><http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/22641>http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/22641
>
>if Nabu are selling what is already free, then I suspect it is just 
>a caveat emptor situation, rather than a copyright infringement

There is a difference, from my understanding of coypright law, 
between commercial use and non-commercial use. The BHL online copy is 
a non-commercial use. The Nabu Press copy is commercial. I am 
reasonably sure that certain restrictions on the latter do not apply 
to the former. It is admittedly not impossible that KU has waived its 
copyrights entirely, and all of KU's publications are public domain 
now, but I would prefer to hear it from someone in a position to 
know, definitively. When this company publishes 600,000 works a year, 
all of them digital copies of online documents, they certainly can't 
be checking the copyright restrictions very carefully on each and 
every one. The question is, will anyone ever actually challenge them 
on it? It bears mentioning that this company may in fact be owned by 
Amazon itself 
http://www.shaftek.org/blog/2010/07/11/nabu-press-bibliobazaar/ - as 
Mike Ivie noted. That would certainly lead to complaints falling on 
deaf ears.

I imagine that the scenario here is that this company is banking on 
any individual copyright holder being unwilling to take the matter to 
court, with all the costs that entails, over something so trivial as 
a minor scientific publication, of which maybe one or two copies were 
ever actually sold on Amazon (if the lawsuit can only claim a right 
to proceeds from sale, then who is going to file a lawsuit for a 
share of $25?). But if they actually sell a total of 80,000 of these 
minor scientific publictions a year at 12 bucks each, from several 
thousand different publishers, though, the scale of the issue becomes 
rather different. Since I myself am not a copyright holder with legal 
rights to assert, I'm not the one to spearhead anything, but it 
strikes me that it might require a lawsuit with LOTS of affected 
copyright holders, acting through a single legal representative, to 
make a cost-effective legal challenge. That is why I made as public 
an issue of this as I could; while no individual would ever be in a 
position to take this company to court, maybe someone will get a 
GROUP organized.

Again, I think it is essential that we confirm that copyright 
violations have actually occurred, and - if so - work to coordinate 
efforts to pursue things as far as possible. I've set off the flare, 
someone else will need to lead the assault.

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