[Taxacom] Re; Botanical Plagiarism

[Stephen Thorpe]

That's not quite what I meant! If the law was clear on this, then of course we must all obey it. But, if the law is a mess of inconsistencies, which nobody seems to understand, then I'm just saying that rather than waste time dissecting it, better to just try to avoid the issue as much as possible, by acting responsibly and ethically. My comments are pointed mostly at biodiversity websites who plaster their pages with copyright notices which, in all likelihood, are unenforceable and ill-defined ...
 
Stephen


________________________________
From: Dean Pentcheff <pentcheff at gmail.com>
To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Sent: Wednesday, 13 March 2013 10:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Re; Botanical Plagiarism

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>wrote:

> None of this makes any sense, really, does it??
>
> By far the most sensible solution is to just forget about copyright
> altogether with this stuff.


Apparently unlike you, Stephen, many of us live in places regulated by the
rule of law. Hence we cannot choose to "forget" laws we deem inconvenient.
The burden of living within the law (and working to change laws we don't
like) is a compact that we voluntarily adopt in return for the social
benefits of a largely-cooperative society.

Ignorance of the law is hard enough to overcome. Choosing to break it or
choosing to decide what the law is based on a personal evaluation of
(ir)relevance really won't scale.


> Otherwise it gets too complicated, with wildly and widely differing
> opinions about claims to copyright. Many institutions would probably try it
> on by claiming that copyright of specimen data was automatically
> transferred to them upon accession of the specimen. Of course, if the
> collector was also an employee, then it is even easier for the institution
> to claim copyright, even if it is a publicly funded collection! I expect
> that at least some collections would actually refuse to maccept specimens
> from you, Bob, if you tried to retain copyright on the data. It is all
> *very* messy!
>
> "Owner of data: The legal entity possessing the right resulting from the
> act of creating a digital record. The record may be a product derived from
> another, possibly non-digital product, which may affect the right."
>
> Drivel! Creating a digital record is irrelevant, surely?
>
> Stephen
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Robert Mesibov <mesibov at southcom.com.au>
> To: TAXACOM <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 March 2013 12:03 PM
> Subject: [Taxacom] Re; Botanical Plagiarism
>
> Rich Pyle wrote:
>
> "- (Potentially) specimen data owned by an institution (although I think we
> should foster a culture where such data are not considered copyrighted)"
>
> Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
> "Specimen data owned by institutions is another "can of worms" (that's
> worms, not
> WoRMS!). If it from a publicly funded collection, then there ought to be no
> copyright. Otherwise, institutions could charge revisers for not only
> access to material, but also
> for publication rights to the specimen data!"
>
> Whoa... How did this one sneak in? Where did the institution get the
> specimen data for its collection? The institution didn't make up the data,
> so unless it did some substantial re-working of the data from the collector
> or the donor or both, how can it claim copyright? Or is assigning a
> registration number to a specimen lot a copyrightable act of creative
> endeavour? Should I explicitly claim copyright on the data on my specimen
> labels before I deposit specimens in a collection?
>
> Here's what GBIF says (http://data.gbif.org/tutorial/datasharingagreement
> ):
>
> "Owner of data: The legal entity possessing the right resulting from the
> act of creating a digital record. The record may be a product derived from
> another, possibly non-digital product, which may affect the right."
> --
> Dr Robert Mesibov
> Honorary Research Associate
> Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
> School of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania
> Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
> Ph: (03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
>
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Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.