[Taxacom] Important follow-up regarding Nabu Press, etc.

Thu Mar 29 21:11:50 CDT 2012

So far, I have not been a proponent for copyright (without releasing rights to the scientific community) in scientific publishing.
However, I just put a copyright notice on our Museum's publication's webpage. We do provide free access to all our publications, but we would not allow re-selling them.

I have come across those Wikipedia books, Nabu Press and the like which populate Amazon and other online retailer's catalogues to an annoying extent. However the legal situation is, I consider commercially re-publishing works without consulting the authors of those works (if they are still alive) an act of hijacking. I did not expect that such practices find defenders in the scientific community. Now I know better.

Frank

Dr. Frank-T. Krell
Curator of Entomology; Editor-in-Chief DMNS Annals
Commissioner, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
Chair, ICZN ZooBank Committee
Department of Zoology 
Denver Museum of Nature & Science 
2001 Colorado Boulevard 
Denver, CO 80205-5798 USA 
Frank.Krell at dmns.org 
Phone: (+1) (303) 370-8244 
Fax: (+1) (303) 331-6492 
http://www.dmns.org/science/museum-scientists/frank-krell
lab page: http://www.dmns.org/krell-lab
Upcoming: Combined Annual Meeting of the Lepidopterist's Society and the Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica, 23-29 July 2012, Denver Museum of Nature & Science; more info at http://www.dmns.org/krell-lab
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science aspires to create a community of critical thinkers who understand the lessons of the past and act as responsible stewards of the future.

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 7:30 PM
To: mivie at montana.edu
Cc: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Important follow-up regarding Nabu Press, etc.

so, Mike, you are suggesting that I am a hypocrite, and should therefore stop trying to contribute to the thread that Doug started by examining the issue objectively from all angles? Well, I would say that if one posts to a list server, one cannot demand that the only replies are by those who are in agreement with one's views! Somewhat analogous to publishing something, and then expecting to retain full control over it. As for hypocrisy, well maybe I am one, and maybe it is a bad thing to be, but consider this: who is better (i.e., more ethical)? (A) a murderer who lets other murderers get away with it; or (B) a murderer who reports other murderers to the police? Both are pretty unethical, of course, but which is better, eh? Cheers, Stephen

________________________________
From: Michael A. Ivie <mivie at montana.edu>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>; "TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Sent: Friday, 30 March 2012 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Important follow-up regarding Nabu Press, etc.

Stephen,

Given the unending amounts of time you spend on blathering about seemingly
pointless nit-picky issues that do not directly benefit you, simply
because you have some sense of it being important because it is right, WHY
are you browbeating Doug about this?  Even if you are right, which you may
not be, that it is pointless if there is no personal benefit, who are you,
of all people, to belittle that activity?

Mike
> ... and you are doing all this on behalf of BHL, are you Doug? Do you own
> shares in BHL?? :)
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
> To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
> Cc: ECN-L at listserv.unl.edu; entomo-l at listserv.uoguelph.ca
> Sent: Friday, 30 March 2012 1:25 PM
> Subject: [Taxacom] Important follow-up regarding Nabu Press, etc.
>
> A few tidbits from various places have been coming in, and an
> interesting pattern has emerged.
>
> After checking on a variety of insect taxa on Amazon for Nabu Press
> items, I had originally done a quick search in other areas of
> zoology, and only noted the volume of Nabu offerings, for all of the
> non-insect keywords I tried (e.g., 209 results for "Nabu Press
> ornithology"). After having received some messages regarding negative
> findings of recent works being pirated, and other messages about
> metadata problems, I started looking closer, and must admit that I
> have yet to find any non-entomological works by Nabu that are not
> pre-1923, and no one has written to me reporting such cases (exactly
> the contrary - I've gotten a few messages saying there is nothing of
> recent vintage among the many Nabu offerings on topic X). I'm now
> suspicious that this may be a more limited offense than I had
> previously thought - limited to entomological publications, at least
> in terms of recent, copyrighted works being advertised and sold as
> pre-1923 works. PLEASE, if anyone is aware of non-entomological works
> of this sort, let me know. This could be very important in tracking
> down how and why these works came to be on Nabu's publishing list.
>
> In essence, there is circumstantial evidence that it may have been as
> restricted a cause as a single large "contaminated" source of bad
> metadata - hundreds or thousands of documents, thematically unified,
> and all incorrectly tagged as being copyright-free. There are
> definitely single sources like this which have supplied large digital
> entomology archives to IA and/or BHL, and leads are being pursued
> even now. Several documents appearing in the Internet Archive,
> including the one for which I was co-author, do indeed show up with
> no indication of copyright, or a mistaken listing stating
> "NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT" (the entry for my paper). This could explain a LOT.
>
> Accordingly, it looks like my initial broad warning about the scale
> may have been a mistake, based on the apparently unique source of the
> mislabeled files in circulation: some entomology literature
> digitization effort. It's still bad, but it may affect a lot fewer
> genuinely copyrighted documents than I'd supposed. So, I'm not quite
> as bad as Chicken Little, but it looks like I should apologize for
> casting such a broad net, if it turns out that only entomological
> works are affected.
>
> 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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-- 
Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D., F.R.E.S.
Montana Entomology Collection
Marsh Labs, Room 50
1901 S. 19th Ave
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717-3020
USA

(406) 994-4610 (voice)
(406) 994-6029 (FAX)
mivie at montana.edu
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