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

[Stephen Thorpe]

Geoff: to quote the lyrics of a Pink Floyd song from their 1979 album 'The Wall' (hopefully not breaching copyright!!), and be aware that these lyrics do not necessarily represent any of my personal views on any topic: 'that one looks Jewish, and that one's a coon, who let all this riff raff into the room? That one's smoking a joint, and another with spots! If I had my way, I'd have them all shot ...'

I never said or implied that Nabu were honest, just that any breach of copyright (if there is one) is trivial, so why the big deal when there are plenty of other dodgy dealings going on, many under a false cloak of respectability? I personally consider the Costello/Wheeler issue to be far more serious and indicative of rot at the core of science ...
 
Stephen
 

________________________________
From: Geoff Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Sent: Friday, 30 March 2012 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Important follow-up regarding Nabu Press, etc.


Waste of time?  Nabu is clearly not presenting their offerings to the
unwary consumers for what they are. If they are simply honest print on
demand dealers why all the subterfuge to get buyers? There's the 
completely irrelevant cover photo instead of the true cover, there's the
claim that they themselves have published the work, complete with ISBN,
there's the wrong date, there's the implication they did the work of
scanning. And there's the not saying the work is free elsewhere.  This is
exploitation of a resource offered in good faith for benefit of all, under
explicit condition it wasn't commercially exploited.  At base the academic
publishers have forgone the possible revenue and these Nabu people are
taking it instead.  Regardless of personal involvement as authors most
people would find this practice devious and reprehensible. Someone (hello
Amazon) should remove these guys presentations from display.

Geoff




On Fri, March 30, 2012 3:33 pm, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> just to clarify, given Frank's remarks below, I am certainly not defending
> Nabu's practices! However, 2 wrongs don't make a right, and so one must
> avoid overreacting to their practices, and making out that they are any
> worse than lots of things which go on in science and elsewhere. Imposing
> controls on others should be a last resort option reserved for the most
> serious crimes, or else it becomes the thin end of the wedge (i.e. SOPA,
> etc.) I do hope that the US doesn't bankrupt itself on the legal bills of
> taking to court resellers of publications that the publishers were giving
> away freely to anybody who wants a copy anyway! What a waste of time!
>  
> Stephen
>