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How do copyright and fair use laws, framed before the internet was a twinkle in the eye, apply in the world of blogging? The answer, as a case that unfolded on ScienceBlogs this week demonstrates, may be "not so clearly."

Ergo, we've asked a few experts and stakeholders to weigh in on the issue of copyright and open access. How ought fair use to be interpreted today—as the blogosphere grows, changes, and searches for a mutually satisfying way to coexist with the traditional publishing world? We'll be adding commentary to this post periodically all week. Stay tuned.

*Updated 4/30*

• Johannes (Jan) Velterop, Director of Open Access at Springer Publishing:
  
  "Copyright is, or should be, kind of irrelevant in scientific discourse other than to ensure recognition for the author. But the system that has evolved, and that we all still keep alive, relies on copyright as a kind of 'payment for services.' Let's face it, as researchers we use scientific journals to get the credits we need. 'Publish or perish,' remember? And journals have to defray their costs, so they charge for subscriptions. And in order to be able to charge for subscriptions, they need copyright. Copyright is therefore a kind of 'payment' on the part of the author for the services of 'formalising,' officially publishing, their article in a peer-reviewed journal. Obviously, copyright is a poor mechanism to pay for those services. Not least because it comes with restrictive access. Much better to simply pay for those services with money, keep the copyright in the process, and publish your articles with open access, making all use of the material free, or at least all non-commercial use, on condition of proper acknowledgement. An increasing number of journals offer that possibility, and an increasing number of funders allow for payment of those publishing services from grant money (it's not all that different from page charges, after all), on the premise that publishing is an integral part of the research itself and therefore the cost of publishing is an integral part of the cost of research."
  
  Jan Velterop was originally a marine geologist and became a science publisher in the mid-1970s. He was one of the small group of people who first defined "open access" in 2001 in Budapest, a meeting resulting in the Budapest Open Access Initiative. He is now Director of Open Access at Springer Publishing, which was the first publisher to offer open access as an option for virtually all of its scientific journals.



• John Wilbanks, Vice President, Science Commons (part of Creative Commons):
  
  "What this really underlines is that the way copyright law and scholarly communication intersect doesn't really work in the digital world. The blogging world is all about cutting, pasting and linking. When you don't have explicit permissions granted in advance, you're at risk of being accused of violating copyright, even if you're not.

  
  It's not as if the copyright transfer regime from an author to a journal emerged because journals wanted to keep people from writing posts on the internet about peer-reviewed research. It's there as part of the payment as Jan notes elsewhere (we can debate the wisdom of the use of copyright in that context elsewhere). But a side effect of that regime is that it's harder to accommodate cultural and technological shifts, like blogging.

  We don't know what technological advancements the future will bring, and our guesses are likely to be wrong. Just think of our visions of plastic domed houses and flying cars. So this is exactly the kind of situation that the open access movement is trying to address. By granting explicit permission to reuse at the outset, you're never worried about violations and takedown letters, and you can use new tools as soon as they emerge.

  But right now, it's sort of a trope in the community that in the U.S., "fair use" is the right to call an attorney. I'm glad to see Shelley stand up for her rights and hope the journals are going to learn what the scientific community will and won't accept. They work as part and parcel of science culture, and the community will certainly do some self-regulation there."

  John Wilbanks is Vice President, Science Commons, at Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that provides copyright licenses free for public use. Previously, Wilbanks held a fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences, and was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

• Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing at the Public Library of Science:

  
  "This example from the Retrospectacle blog perhaps indicates why scientists tend to be cautious about reusing content even when it's for legitimate research purposes. The initial response from Wiley would be enough to put the wind up any researcher, and the story would end there. Fortunately, the blogosphere rapidly exposed the reaction as inappropriate, but even the backtracking from Wiley leaves questions about fair use unanswered.

  At PLoS, we are quite often contacted by readers (and even authors) seeking permission to reuse content that's been published in PLoS Journals. Of course, we tell them that no permission is required, because open access means that there are no restrictions on reuse. Hopefully this aspect of open access will soon be widely understood, but for the moment, there are many people that equate open access with free access and don't appreciate that restrictions on reuse have also been lifted. Too many threatening messages from publishers perhaps.

  As open access takes hold, we can forget about 'fair use' in the context of scientific publishing - all use will be fair use - and the default behaviour will be to reuse content in all sorts of creative ways. If the example in the Retrospectacle blog has taught some lessons about fair use, and has raised awareness that open access content can be reused without restriction, then it will have done a great service."

  Mark Patterson was a research geneticist before moving into scientific publishing. He was the editor of Trends in Genetics, then the editor of Nature Reviews Genetics, and is now Director of Publishing at PLoS.