3 ms·

The first sentence of the post is "In January 2013 the IEEE Xplore digital library began hosting digital copies of 400+ books published by MIT Press". I don't t

by p4bl0 12y ago

The first sentence of the post is "In January 2013 the IEEE Xplore digital library began hosting digital copies of 400+ books published by MIT Press". I don't think he personally agreed to anything, the publishers IEEE and The MIT Press must have decided to do something with some books which they didn't need author consent for.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Yeah, I saw that too, the trail is still there - he's no fool and, as his book testifies, knows copyright in depth. You'd think he might stipulate with his publisher that he had some say in sub-licensing or set some sanity limits on sales or something? My guess at the first response to my answer above would be "MIT Press wouldn't take it on then". But then it becomes a case of "my price for the copyright in this book allowed MIT Press to do this", which is fine but means that he sold the license still that enabled this. Incidentally the economics aren't entirely clear to me. The author says IEEE charge $15 per chapter. But it's MIT Press's book (effectively), how much are they getting? How much is the author getting. Is the story here [just] "authors have bad contracts with their publishers". It's almost like a malicious joke - "This OA guy wants to sell his book for $11 and use a CC license, so we're going to sell it for 20-times that just to screw with him. The kicker, it's not even open access! Lol! That'll teach him.". You'd think the first line of this guys publishing contract/license would read "all version of this book, sub-licensed or otherwise must be OA without exception".
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  So, authors have perfect contracts? Or, he shouldn't bother controlling exploitation of his works? Or, he shouldn't know as a copyright expert how to deal with such issues? Or, IEEE aren't really acting exploitatively? All, none? What then?

3 ms·

The first sentence of the post is "In January 2013 the IEEE Xplore digital library began hosting digital copies of 400+ books published by MIT Press". I don't t

by p4bl0 12y ago

pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Yeah, I saw that too, the trail is still there - he's no fool and, as his book testifies, knows copyright in depth. You'd think he might stipulate with his publisher that he had some say in sub-licensing or set some sanity limits on sales or something? My guess at the first response to my answer above would be "MIT Press wouldn't take it on then". But then it becomes a case of "my price for the copyright in this book allowed MIT Press to do this", which is fine but means that he sold the license still that enabled this. Incidentally the economics aren't entirely clear to me. The author says IEEE charge $15 per chapter. But it's MIT Press's book (effectively), how much are they getting? How much is the author getting. Is the story here [just] "authors have bad contracts with their publishers". It's almost like a malicious joke - "This OA guy wants to sell his book for $11 and use a CC license, so we're going to sell it for 20-times that just to screw with him. The kicker, it's not even open access! Lol! That'll teach him.". You'd think the first line of this guys publishing contract/license would read "all version of this book, sub-licensed or otherwise must be OA without exception".
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  So, authors have perfect contracts? Or, he shouldn't bother controlling exploitation of his works? Or, he shouldn't know as a copyright expert how to deal with such issues? Or, IEEE aren't really acting exploitatively? All, none? What then?