Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 18:12:41 +1200
Subject: Re: Contentville and UMI


Always interesting when you think you're kind of on top of things then
suddenly "hey! that's not supposed to be happening to us!". Fairly relevant
to Maya Dodd's point in some ways :).

Of course - sort of like Napster vs. home taping issue -  nothing's *really*
changed: libraries often charge for making copies available to anyone But it
certainly lets work circulate faster and in digital form.

Radhika noted that many people try and turn their thesis into a book -
sometimes with minimal rewriting. Although the theses have always been
nominally freely available, they've remained relatively obscure and hard to
get, and institutions haven't been trying to market them. Authors have
basically been able to exploit this "distribution inefficiency" to
"monetise" their content via book publishers. However, the rise of sites
like Contentville seems to throw that model into question.

My guess is that students are going to start paying a bit more attention to
the intellectual property policies of the institutions they're signing on
with. From my experience these have been more based on "gentlemen's
agreements" and historical practices than what's in the policies. I'm
certainly troubled by the thought of my current thesis-in-progress ending up
being hawked in a less-than-sympathetic way by some contractor to the
institution. OTOH, I don't see much I can do about it, and anyway the idea
of this academic thing is that it's supposed to spread ideas, right?

Interesting times in the academic intellectual property world! have more to
say on this but I think Maya's thread is more important so we should
probably get back on topic...

cheers

danny


Elizabeth Deloughrey wrote:

> Hi Folks:
> 
> First, apologies for the length of this email. I have checked the UMI web
> site and they have their own program to order dissertations on-line. I've
> scoured through their news releases, web links, and company profile and see
> nothing of Contentville even mentioned. UMI website:
> http://www.umi.com/hp/Products/DisExpress.html
> 
> If you have questions about the relation between UMI and Contentville, you
> can email the president of UMI/Bell & Howell at
> JoeReynolds-AT-bellhowell.infolearning.com
> 
> A quote of his which is telling:
> 
> Reynolds stated. "We will continue to expand our intellectual property for
> the academic researchers of the world and will continue to offer the best
> value for our customer's research dollar."
> 
> I also found a completely uncritical press release which is very recent and
> have pasted it below. Although it doesn't say as much, it seems the
> Contentville president was faced with legal action if he continued to sell
> others' works without paying royalities. He is lauded for "choosing" to
> abide by the law.

> 



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