I agree with most of Kipp's comments, with a few quibbles.
First, our distaste for paywalls does not, in itself, give us the moral or legal right to publish pirated content.
That said, and I believe we as a club have had the discussion at the beginning of this activity, the pertinent facts, which no one likely knows, would be:
1. Did the journal have authors sign a copyright release?2. If so, the copyright belongs to the defunct society. When that society went belly up, did some other org receive its remaining assets, including publication rights?
Whether or not we're making money off this is immaterial. What would matter is if the actual copyright holder wants to make money off the content, the copyright holder might come after us, sue, demand we remove the content, and/or seek other remedies. This is extraordinarily unlikely given the obscure nature of the content. This stuff isn't exactly Harry Potter. If it happens, we can take it down.
I agree with Kipp that our aims are purely altruistic, and I would expect that any of the authors, if they are still living, would likely be happy to see it. As a fellow author, I understand the desire for anything that gets our content in front of interested readers.
Bob Zone 7 dividing Sarracenias today
On Saturday, March 16, 2024 at 01:34:39 PM EDT, Kipp McMichael via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:
Mitch,
You replied to the digest email so the context of your question is lost but I remember the topic.
No one is making money off of these pdfs and the work put into creating them makes content available that would otherwise be inaccessible. I am going to wager neither you, the other editors nor any of the contributors to these journals were paid for their work. The pdfs preserve all attributions of their original content creators. The members of the society that created this journal paid their membership dues and received these journals for their payment. The society itself is now defunct.
What, exactly, would be the purpose of concerning ourselves with who gave permission to create these pdfs? Who is being harmed by them being made available? Should we be concerned about whether the authors of the Herculaneum scrolls or the illuminators of the Book of Kells gave permission to have their content made digitally available?
Too much human knowledge is trapped behind journal paywalls already. More, still, is lost to pointless concerns about securing "permission to share" material that was created by people who wanted to share their knowledge in their first place. I cannot imagine a single author or photographer who created this work being concerned about whether more people get to enjoy it as long as attributions is maintained. I say this as an author and photographer of published content.
Forgive my rant, but we have to be the change we want to see in the world.
-|<ipp
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As a former editor of Plant Life/Herbertia, I was wondering who gave permission to make these journals available digitally?
R Mitchel Beauchamp
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