New APS Member Survey

For me, the issue of APRL and adherence to copyrights is that costly copyright litigation can be started regardless the facts. If it is thought that the APRL has deep pockets, the risk of someone bringing civil legal action increases. So being prudent is probably the best APRL copyright policy, this aligns with my experience with them.

Also from what I understand, 'compiled' publications can drive more discovery and effort to wade through copyrights of every single article. I believe that some publications can have separate agreements with each of the article authors. I also believe that APRL has previously dealt with situations where only some of the article authors have given permission to digitize. This throws a monkey wrench into the decision, I doubt they want to digitize, archive, and present only a partial publication.
Don

"Is it that you can more easily store and/or share it?" YES! with a real book only 1 person can read at a time. In digital it requires the same thing. There has to be a way to make sure only 1 person can read it at a time. Also make it so you can't copy or store it or print it. Even take screen shots. All that must work on all platforms with constant audits to insure an update did not change anything.

That is a lot to ask of a library huge university libraries have issues with this. Heck Amazon has Kindle unlimited but they only have some of their stock on the service.

rogdcam wrote:


A few posts back I said I'd ask the APRL about copyright and reproduction/lending policies and report back. My first post was about copyrighted materials; my follow up ("stick a fork in it") was about out-of-copyright materials. That's all, just following through.

Per 51studebaker's comment, it only makes sense that the APRL would establish a policy that avoided potential litigation. But I believe there's more to it than just that. The APRL doesn't have the budget to constantly add new titles to their shelves. So if an author wants to make their work available to APS members, they have to donate it. That means the cost of the book and paying for shipping. Needless to say, it wouldn't sit well if an author discovered the entirety of their copyrighted work was scanned cover-to-cover and provided to a researcher by the library.

Even at that, the cost to a researcher of having the APRL scan a great number of pages could easily exceed that of buying the book outright — and that applies to both copyrighted and public domain materials.

Cheers

I just hope that the APS library is scanning in those rare, fragile books that cannot be lent out, and are well past any copyright limitations.

I believe there is only one poster in this thread who is a lawyer with extensive experience in this area of law (cjpalermo1964) and he is not offering specific legal advice.

The rest of us are posting opinions based upon hearsay and casual observation and should be taken as such. If anyone has an actual copyright infringement issue, please seek professional legal advice and do not reply upon the anonymous opinions posted in this thread. Our anonymous opinions may or may not be accurate and we certainly are not going to help you cover your costs if you get tied up in court.

Posters, it helps if you try to include things like "In my opinion", "for me", or "from my chair" in your posts and avoid making your post sound like they are definitive legal facts.
Don

Don, I'm not sure what prompted your comment/disclaimer (OK, I'll ask... "what prompted your comment/disclaimer?") But since "the rest of us" is all-inclusive, and given that I spent considerable time trying to get accurate information for those interested in the subject (rodgcam being one), I'll say this for the record:

None of the info I've posted in this thread was specious. I did my due diligence to get info on the APRL's lending/copying policy directly from Scott Tiffney and posted it here — abridged, yet verbatim, as is standard practice as if I were writing an article. But I refrained from simply copying and pasting his entire response because that would be fundamentally inappropriate without his permission. However, I did preface my email to him by saying that there was a discussion about the APRL (blah blah blah) online and that I wanted to share specific details about lending/copying policies in the thread.

At the end of the day, understanding copyright is not difficult. Infinitely more difficult is getting a person to divest themself of the belief that copyrights exist to be blithely disregarded. One doesn't have to be a copyright attorney to know what's right and wrong.

Let us also consider that we're talking about using a library for philatelic research. It's the tradition of philatelic researchers to give credit where credit is due, as reflected in the often lengthy bibliographies for articles and monographs — bibliographies which regularly cite public domain works. I would like to think that no student of philately would risk their reputation by publishing a work without references, or touting how they got all their information from illegal copies of copyrighted works.

As I see it, the issue of copyright is so plainly black and white — either it's copyrighted or it's in the public domain — that it barely requires discussion. Sure, it's interesting to know the details, but I can't think of a situation where the topic requires much debate.

It is a slow news day so something to talk about.

But like many laws, they are often broken but enforcement is depends on various factors.

Some of us may not be lawyers but own a publishing company (not in stamps) and sit on the board of a trade association that has a library (kind of like a hobby association but dealing with a trade)

And I have gone to over 50 medical operations and had 1200+ medical procedures over the last 8 years but that hardly makes me qualified to give anyone ANONYMOUS medical advice on their next operation.

I am a volunteer moderator of this forum who is simply trying to protect members and the forum itself (I assume that no one wants to belly up legal fees if someone decides to launch a civil action). I felt it wise to point out that anonymous people were posting legal opinions and would not be a party if someone gets served.

Everyone here can post their opinions, this is what a forum is about. But sleeping in a Motel 6 does not make someone a lawyer or a doctor.

This thread has wandered far from the original subject (APS Member Survey). Let's get back to APS Member Survey topic.
Don

2 cents: I don't know what's behind the APS - HipStamp agreement (I assume money and maybe technology) nor, especially, any future APS - ASDA agreement (which sounds problematic at the outset given (my perception of) their conflicting interests), but I thought that IF the APS doesn't know the answers to the questions in the member survey comprehensively then they were well worth asking.

It would be nice if the profiles of the answers (by age, length of membership, life members, geography, APS/ASDA members, etc.) were made available to the members. I suspect that there are a few services which rate very, very highly (circuits) but others fall off quickly and then ultimately to some services (narrow content in The American Philatelist, for example) for which there is a minimal to zilch audience. And it would be nice to have feedback on what decisions were made.

After ~50 years, I have kept only two or three of The American Philatelist issues. The one profiling the various catalogs recently was superb and one of the very best. Like Scott finally moving to integrate the British Commonwealth with the rest of the world in their catalogs, and The American Philatelist finally dropping the page numbering of the 1800's, APS needs to continue to evolve …