Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!ctrsol!ginosko!uunet!zephyr!tektronix!psueea!parsely!bucket!whizz!bbh
From: bbh@whizz.uucp (Bud Hovell)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: In Moderation
Message-ID: <702@whizz.uucp>
Date: 15 Jul 89 17:20:45 GMT
References: <8831@chinet.chi.il.us> <3300@epimass.EPI.COM> <197600001@inmet> <692@whizz.uucp> <4954@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: bbh@whizz.UUCP (Bud Hovell)
Organization: McCormick & Hovell, Inc.
Lines: 67

In article <4954@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <692@whizz.uucp>, bbh@whizz.uucp (Bud Hovell) writes:
>> Both in this example and on the usenet, such submission is entirely voluntary
>> on the part of the writer - unlike *any* printed medium in which editorial
>
>You've obviously never heard of vanity presses, amateur press associations,
>and other ego-publication media. amateur press associations (APAs) and fanzines

I have - and the cost of publication and distribution is borne entirely by
the author. This is because no publisher has been found who believes that 
the market value of the work will return its cost. What is *obvious* here is
that the analogy fails.

Again, the question is: *who* bears the primary cost of publication and
distribution. On usenet, the author does not support even a fraction of the
cost of publication/distribution. He may have the vanity to publish, but
that doesn't qualify the medium as a "vanity press" or anything else of
like ilk.

>> [Academic] journals might be cited as a singular anomoly in this regard,
>
>And what about peer review?

You can't be serious. :-) "Publish or perish" is a game that *all* the players
are committed to, willingly or not. The object of the game is to get a better
career path in academia. If you don't publish, someone else will - and will get
a leg up ahead of you. This is such a well-known complaint among academics as
to have become a public joke. And you think "peers" are gonna make waves?

The primary audience of such publications is composed of other academics in
the same fix (and usually the same field) who have the same motives arising
out of a fully-justified fear of loosing. There are some very fine journals
out there, but there are *thousands* of journals, and most are published to
serve this purpose almost solely. Few gain any readership outside the small
group of people who are required to keep the game going in order not to fall
behind.

>> Since the decision to release the 'article' is exclusively that of the person
>> submitting it, I have difficulty understanding how anyone could conclude that
>> in its raw form, such a 'work', stand-alone, would have identifiable market
>> value, since there is no editor to make such judgment.
>
>It has an identifiable market value. Many people spend hundreds of dollars a
>month getting Usenet. Divide that by the article volume and you have a good
>approximation of the market value of the average article.

This argument has merit, I suppose. I doubt if it would fly in a court of
competent jurisdiction. But you could be right, and I quite wrong.

And I think that this entire issue is really moot unless and until someone is
moved to attempt to defend in the courts an asserted copyright for a work that
has been 'published' on Usenet. Until then, this is an argument amongst a
crop of legal amateurs (including me, most assuredly). Perhaps the opinion
of a seasoned copyright lawyer would be appropriate at this point.

But more bandwidth devoted to this subject strikes me as, indeed, an exercise
in vanity. If one believes his rights are infringed, he should take it to the
courts.

Lawsuits have a way of distilling issues very rapidly. :-) Though they are a
hell of way to have to resolve disputes.
 
                                 Bud Hovell

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