Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math, Bad Math has a very supportive article up summarizing my tangle with lawyers yesterday over the 'fair use' of a figure from the fruit antioxidant paper.
In short, I was threatened with legal action if I didn't take it down immediately. I used ONE panel of ONE figure, and a chart, from over 10+ figures in the paper. I cited and reported everything straight forwardly. I would think they'd be happy to get the press. But alas, no.
I got around them by complying, but reproducing the figures myself in Excel. They didn't bother me anymore, as apparently thats 100% legal and ok.
But it leads me to ask the question: What really constitutes fair use? This is taxpayer-supported research, which should be available for all. If a blog properly gives credit, isn't plagiarizing, and correctly summarizes data, isn't that fair use?
Isn't the point of publishing data to disseminate it, rather that lob threats at grad students who happen to be excited about it?
(Continued below the fold, with the threat I received....)
Here's what I received:
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Re: Antioxidants in Berries Increased by Ethanol (but Are Daiquiris Healthy?) by Shelly Bats
http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/antioxidants_in_berries_increa.php
The above article contains copyrighted material in the form of a table and graphs taken from a recently published paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. If these figures are not removed immediately, lawyers from John Wiley & Sons will contact you with further action.
Regards,
Lisa Richards
Editorial Assistant
Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture
Society of Chemical Industry
14-15 Belgrave Square
London UK
SW1X 8PS
T: +44 (0) 207 598 1548
F: +44 (0) 207 598 1558
E: lisa.richards@soci.org
W: www.soci.org
SCI - where science meets business
Register with Wiley Interscience to sign up for free contents alerts to SCI journals (Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, Pest Management Science and Polymer International) by email. Visit http://www.interscience.wiley .com/alerts
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I replied:
Dear Lisa-
Threats are not required for me to comply, all you had to do was ask. Although I am baffled as to why you would prevent the dissemination of these results given the amount of poorly-written and misleading press releases that have preceeded me. Might you grant me permission to use the two figures online? If you read my post you would see that it is just a straight reporting of the data.
Shelley Batts
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I received this reply:
Dear Shelly,
I am unable to grant permission, you will need to contact Duncan James at John Wiley & Sons Ltd. E: permreq@wiley.co.uk
In the meantime, we still require the images to be removed.
Regards,
Lisa Richards
Editorial Assistant
Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture
Society of Chemical Industry
14-15 Belgrave Square
London UK
SW1X 8PS
T: +44 (0) 207 598 1548
F: +44 (0) 207 598 1558
E: lisa.richards@soci.org
W: www.soci.org
SCI - where science meets business
Register with Wiley Interscience to sign up for free contents alerts to SCI journals (Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, Pest Management Science and Polymer International) by email. Visit http://www.interscience.wiley .com/alerts .
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I emailed the address she recommended, and haven't gotten a reply in over 30 hours.
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Comments
You were definitely within fair use rights. What a crock.
Posted by: writerdd | April 25, 2007 02:20 PM
"where science meets business" should be "where science means business (cf. Al Capone)"
Posted by: coturnix | April 25, 2007 02:21 PM
Mark is right: what you did falls quite clearly within the conventions of fair use. I'd like to suggest that all SciBloggers join together and do something en masse -- within fair use parameters, but provocative enough to draw some attention to this kind of intimidation. Perhaps we could all include one image from a journal?
Posted by: James Hrynyshyn | April 25, 2007 02:21 PM
I think you should contact the Fair Use Project of the Stanford Law School and provide copies of the correspondence. Even if no further action is required on your part, at the very least Project staff would appreciate being informed so that they can keep track of the kinds of threats are being made as they continue to develop strategies for safeguarding genuine fair use. They recently had great success in the case of Shloss v. The Estate of James Joyce. The link: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/taxonomy/term/374
Posted by: Elf Eye | April 25, 2007 02:26 PM
That is, "the kinds of threats that are being made."
Posted by: Elf Eye | April 25, 2007 02:28 PM