Here's a (the beginnings of a?) copyright discussion going on over on the HUMANIST list. I thought it was close enough to our SCREEN-L's discussion of the Kinko's case to warrant distribution here. Does anyone know of screen-oriented e-texts out there? ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1302. Tuesday, 30 Apr 1991. (1) Date: Sat, 27 Apr 91 15:32:10 LCL (39 lines) From: "Dana Cartwright, Syracuse Univ," <DECARTWR@SUVM> Subject: Copyright (2) Date: Sat, 27 Apr 91 16:13:07 -0400 (73 lines) From: Joel Goldfield <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Copyright discussion (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 27 Apr 91 15:32:10 LCL From: "Dana Cartwright, Syracuse Univ, 315-443-4504" <DECARTWR@SUVM> Subject: Copyright Roy Flannagan raises the subject of copyright again. On the one hand, it has been discussed at length. On the other, it is hardly a resolved issue, and surely is important to all of us. The US Congress is at present interested (again!) in this subject. Last year the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA, an arm of the US Congress which studies technologies and reports to the Congress, with the intent of having the members make informed decisions) was asked to study it in the context of computer software...members of Congress being concerned that the United States, once the dominant player in software, is losing market share to other countries. And the advent of the EC (1992) will probably affect the software industry and markets in the US. Among other things, OTA assembled a panel of interested people, representing various segments of the industry. About 1/3 of the members are faculty or administrators from major US universities. I happen to be one such. The panel has met twice (once last fall, once just a month or so ago). OTA expects to issue a final report to Congress sometime this year. The relevance of all this to Humanist members is unclear to me. Certainly OTA is studying software rather than texts. However, the study has widened to include databases, including databases of texts. I have found the past discussions on Humanist helpful, as they have provided real-life examples of problems besetting scholars. And the international flavor of Humanist helps too, because copyright is an international issue (this is very clear when speaking with the OTA staff and with the Washington legal folks). So one reason for carrying on discussion of copyright on Humanist is that it does potentially influence, in some small way, what happens to us all... (2) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 27 Apr 91 16:13:07 -0400 From: Joel Goldfield <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Copyright discussion Inspired by Roy Flannagan's recent HUMANIST contribution, let me stoke the fire a bit with the following queries and comments. How much chaos would we create if we really did organize a group of mutually supportive scholars and computing centers focused on providing e-texts at little cost (shipping & handling), perhaps partially in a bartering system? This would be purely for the purpose of scholarly research and assurance of availability of electronic materials so that we could verify results in a collegial and not financially burdensome manner? What role would the Princeton-Rutgers project, the Gutenberg one, NEH, and other organizations play in this effort? What will happen when Xanadu is in operation (or might this be irrelevant to a non-profit group)? A Colloquium on Computational Approaches to Textual Studies held recently at the Institute for Academic Technology revealed in the round table discussion that attitudes had changed somewhat since last year's meeting where 99% of the attendees agreed that our #1 priority in computer-assisted textual studies was gaining access to machine-readable texts. This year the #1 priority takes this priority for granted, given all the scanners, effective OCR software, e-text clearinghouses, similar groups, and for-profit publishing houses with these materials. This year, people were most concerned with avoiding legal improprieties in using e-texts to reach their scholarly goals. Appropriate legal concern is to be praised. Nonetheless, several attendees noted that some of the best resource groups--publishing houses and clearinghouses--impose onerous restrictions on the use of their materials. Two of these are ARTFL and the InaLF ("Frantext," etc.), because of agreements with a government and/or publishing unions. There is great concern in France that its literary "patrimoine" might be circulated beyond government control if the information is not controlled properly, apparently. The main database, containing 183 million word occurrences, can be consulted at various stations throughout France as well as in Finland, Belgium, Portugal, England, Japan and Sweden, mainly in universities. Access to "Frantext" relies on the STELLA querying system. Though this remains to be verified by first-hand examination of the product, the "Frantext" derivative CD-ROM, "DISCOTEXT," contains 400 works of French literature drawn from the 19th and 20th centuries and will be sold by Hachette starting in the Fall. The CD-ROM would seem to be a good resource for scholars who either cannot consult the ARTFL database (which has a much less robust querying system) nor the INaLF's. If scholars wanted to run queries other than those available, the CD-ROM would permit this freer experimentation. However, according to a highly-placed source in France who should remain nameless here, the structure of "DISCOTEXT"'s software or that of the CD-ROM itself prevents scholars from displaying any structured ("reconstructed"?) text. This means that you can analyze the text stylo-statistically to your heart's content, but you CANNOT READ IT. I imagine that the idea is that scholars should have that publisher's hardcopy text on a copy holder next to the computer screen to follow the page indications or whatever. The sentiment voiced by colleagues in academic seems to indicate that unless the morass of legal impediments is alleviated and settled mutually constructively, we're going to hit a brick wall in our research very soon. My colleagues' comments seem to indicate that it's looming awfully visibly just a few meters down the road. Collegially yours, Joel D. Goldfield Fellow in Foreign Langauges Institute for Acad. Technology/UNC-Chapel Hill