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

[Stephen Thorpe]

let me put it another way, Geoff, which may be clearer? Nabu, who are probably not the most honest outfit in the whole world, but that is immaterial, have breached copyright laws only* if it is possible for authors/publishers to stipulate that, say, *only* (they themselves and) BHL have the right to *distribute* their publications, even though anyone without restriction can obtain the publications, free of charge, from BHL. Then, clearly BHL would have grounds against Nabu, and so would the authors/publishers (since they presumably wouldn't get their share of the mutual benefits, if BHL lost their exclusivity rights). But such a possibility would be, to my way of thinking, just an insidious way to facilitate cosy financial relationships between authors/publishers and BHL, and I have a hard time accepting this sort of thing as ethical. It is a side effect of profit motivated science. Sure, Nabu would then be "guilty" of obstructing a cosy financial
 relationship, but is that really such a crime? Where does this sort of thing end? The reality is that we end up with just a bunch of corporate entities, each scratching each other's backs, and very little actual progress in science. Just look at the way taxonomic progress in NZ is falling after privatisation, and the desperate tactics at play to try to keep the ship from sinking altogether. For another example, a very small local publisher (not Zootaxa or anything like that, they are very happy with what I am doing) once tried to make out that I was breaching copyright by posting on Wikispecies links to PDFs on their site (i.e. the links were links to *their site*)  that were freely available. Turns out that they just wanted the extra hits of people navigating through their site to find the PDFs, rather than the direct links I was posting, which would only give them 1 hit per download! If they could have done so, they would also have stopped Google
 searches from listing the direct URLs! There are parallels here with citations (more citations, more hits on web pages, both amount in the end to greater profits one way or the other) ...
 
Stephen
 
*there might seem to be another option, but it seems to me to lack rationality! A publisher could perhaps allow *anyone*, including BHL, to give away freely a publication to anyone who wants it, but stipulate that nobody can sell it, they can only give it away! But WHY? Are they so concerned with the public good that they want to prevent suckers buying something that they can get elsewhere for free? I very much doubt it, particularly since many publishers themselves still sell older publications that are freely available on BHL, or elsewhere. They don't check! Even the government might well object to this, since it could impose tax on sales, but gains nothing from people giving stuff away for free! This was the basis for my questioning of Doug's motives ... why does he care if Nabu make a couple of bucks selling one of his old publications to some sucker? It is probably not likely to happen every day, or deprive some poor old lady of her pension! Quite
 possibly Doug is more concerned with the public good than many publishers are, but that didn't seem to me to be the reason he was giving, and I just don't get what his reason was ...
 

________________________________
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
>