[Taxacom] copyright infringement by "Nabu Press"?
Kirkbride, Joseph
Joseph.Kirkbride at ARS.USDA.GOV
Thu Mar 29 07:35:06 CDT 2012
Look carefully at the authorship of all publications. USDA employees, and I believe all employees of the government of the United States, are prohibited from copyrighting anything that they produce as part of their official duties. The legal boiler plate that we are supposed to send to publishers is:
"The article/chapter cited was prepared by a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee as part of his/her official duties. Copyright protection under U.S. Copyright Law Title 17 U.S.C. ยง 105 is not available for such works. Accordingly, there is no copyright to transfer. The fact that the private publication in which the article appears is itself copyrighted does not affect the material of the U.S. Government, which can be freely reproduced by the public. Articles and other publications prepared as part of a Federal employee's official duties are property of the U.S. Government."
Joe K
Joseph H. Kirkbride, Jr.
USDA-ARS, U.S. National Arboretum
Floral & Nursery Plants Research Unit
3501 New York Avenue NE
Washington, DC 20002-1958 USA
Tel.: 202-245-4534
Cell: 301-602-6958
FAX: 202-245-5973
E-mail: joseph.kirkbride at ars.usda.gov
-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Doug Yanega
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 6:22 PM
To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Cc: ECN-L at listserv.unl.edu; entomo-l at listserv.uoguelph.ca
Subject: [Taxacom] copyright infringement by "Nabu Press"?
Hi, all. Apologies for crossposting, but this is a major
announcement. Just by chance, I noticed a publication on which I was
a co-author, the original citation for which is
Engel, M.S., Brooks, R.W., Yanega, D. (1997) New genera and subgenera
of augochlorine bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae). Scientific Papers,
Natural History Museum, University of Kansas 5: 1-21
has been republished by someone called "Nabu Press" and is being sold
on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/genera-subgenera-augochlorine-bees-Hymenoptera/dp/1179465210/ref=sr_1_22?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332967903&sr=1-22
(with reversed authorship sequence)
Their claim that this publication is from before 1923 is patently false.
I then noticed that the same company, Nabu Press, has reproduced a
large number of scientific publications that are presumably not
public domain, but that they universally claim to be published before
1923 - this one, for example, by E.O. Wilson:
http://www.amazon.com/true-army-ants-Indo-Australian-Hymenoptera/dp/1174547839/ref=sr_1_64?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332970114&sr=1-64
or this one by Howard Evans:
http://www.amazon.com/taxonomic-Nearctic-belonging-Pompilini-Hymenoptera/dp/1245166778/ref=sr_1_23?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332968317&sr=1-23
these two by Roy Snelling:
http://www.amazon.com/revision-honey-genus-Myrmecocystus-Hymenoptera/dp/1174538600/ref=sr_1_63?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332970174&sr=1-63
http://www.amazon.com/Studies-California-ants-Stenamma-Hymenoptera/dp/1174597453/ref=sr_1_70?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332970174&sr=1-70
This one by Denis Brothers:
http://www.amazon.com/Phylogeny-classification-Hymenoptera-reference-Mutillidae/dp/1174555939/ref=sr_1_65?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332970174&sr=1-65
this one by Mark Moffett:
http://www.amazon.com/Revision-genus-Myrmoteras-Hymenoptera-Formicidae/dp/1174559136/ref=sr_1_66?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332970174&sr=1-66
and this one by Jim Carpenter:
http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-species-subfamily-Masarinae-Hymenoptera/dp/1174580674/ref=sr_1_68?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332970174&sr=1-68
and one by Dave Grimaldi:
http://www.amazon.com/rediscovered-primitive-ants-Hymenoptera-relationships/dp/1174789123/ref=sr_1_72?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332970174&sr=1-72
or this:
http://www.amazon.com/Catalog-hymenoptera-America-north-Mexico/dp/1175126756/ref=sr_1_21?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332968317&sr=1-21
originally published by the Smithsonian Institution (I doubt they
would take the matter lightly!)
and this 2005 publication from Gary Coovert via the Ohio Biological Survey:
http://www.amazon.com/The-ants-Ohio-Hymenoptera-Formicidae/dp/1174790369/ref=sr_1_28?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332969779&sr=1-28
and dozens more.
AND THIS IS JUST SEARCHING ON THE KEYWORD HYMENOPTERA!!! Every Order
or family name I type in to Amazon's search engine, not just of
insects, but of all animals or plants, generates DOZENS of Nabu Press
publications. Many are indeed pre-1923 publications (including
Linnaeus!), but many are NOT.
Also, keep your eyes peeled for similar publications by "General
Books, LLC" like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Systematics-genus-Mimosestes-Coleoptera-Bruchidae/dp/1235854345/ref=sr_1_104?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332972406&sr=1-104
- which, being a reprint of a USDA publication, might actually be a
public domain document, and therefore not a copyright violation - but
that doesn't mean all such works are valid under copyright law.
Obviously, we have to react, but we also have to be careful to know
what is or is not legal. It would be interesting to know, for
certain, which of the works I link above are or are not public domain
works.
This is a major scam, presumably pulling in large amounts of money,
selling reprints of copyrighted works that are probably authored by
nearly every publishing author on these mailing lists. I urge anyone
who has published anything, ever, to search on Amazon to see if their
works have been illegally reprinted by Nabu Press. They're very easy
to spot: a thumbnail of the cover showing some landscape photo, often
combined with a 2010 or 2011 publication date. A little information
on this "publisher" is on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiblioBazaar
We need to get EVERYONE affected by this to write to Amazon and put a
stop to this.
On Amazon's copyright claims page
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=footer_cou?nodeId=508088#copyright)
they ask for:
---------
An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to
act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been
infringed upon;
A description of where the material that you claim is infringing
is located on the site, including the auction ID number, if
applicable;
Your address, telephone number, and e-mail address;
A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the
disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or
the law;
A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above
information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright
owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.
--------
It is IMPERATIVE that the actual copyright holders contact Amazon
about this issue! Unless you can satisfy the above checklist, it is
presumably not worth writing to them. The given address is:
Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108
phone: (206) 266-4064
fax: (206) 266-7010
e-mail: copyright at amazon.com
I might be overstating the issue by saying this, but I think the
scientific community has to take a stand on this NOW, and push the
legal aspects as far as they will go. We can't allow a precedent like
this to go unchallenged; this has to be stopped, as soon as possible,
as publicly as possible, to make it clear that no one can go around
pulling crap like this and get away with it. For any one of us
authors, or publishers, the loss may be negligible, but this company
is apparently intent on reprinting every single scientific paper in
history (not just those which are legally in the public domain), and
the cumulative damage could be enormous.
You might want to pass this along to your colleagues working on other
disciplines; I have yet to find any taxonomic group that has not had
*recent* works reprinted by Nabu Press, and the odds that all of
these are genuinely public domain seem impossibly small.
Please don't ignore this. I'm not one to go around spreading rumors
or chain mails or such. This is genuine, and the scale of it boggles
the mind.
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
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