Copyright, fair use and academic freedom

If an author publishes work and I copy it for my own purpose, then I have stolen something from the author (and publisher, if the copyright is held by both). But if I quote something of the author's for the purposes of discussion, then I have committed no theft, in pretty well every jurisdiction that is cosignatory to the Berne Convention on Copyright. It's called "fair use". In fact, the whole point of publishing is to have people discuss what you publish, right?

Not according to Lisa Richards of the Society of Chemical Industry, it isn't. She sent a nasty letter threatening legal action (by the publisher's lawyers!) if Shelley at Retrospectacle didn't take down a part of a figure she copied from an article she was discussing. Follow the last link to see the details.

And complain wherever you can. This sort of attempt to bully people who discuss ideas is comtemptible.

More like this

When Shelley Batts wrote up a report on an article about antioxidants in fruits, she never expected to get contacted by the copyright police, but that's exactly what happened. She had reproduced a table and a figure from the article, and got this notice from an editorial assistant at the publisher…
By now you have already heard that my ScienceBlogs colleague, Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle, has been threatened with legal action if she did not remove published figures from a blog post. Shelley had a nifty post on a recent paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture detailing…
A few months ago I got in my car and drove north until I reached a remarkable building filled with several million mice. At Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, scientists are studying mice to understand many mysteries of genetics and medicine. But I was particularly curious about a project…
I don't know if you caught this story, but one of our fellow bloggers here at ScienceBlogs, Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle, was threatened with legal action when she reproduced a figure from a published paper in one of her blog posts. The original post is here (now with the figure removed). She…