Odds & Ends
This was brought to my attention earlier this week; apparently one is able to buy scholarly articles on Amazon. When publishing to a journal, one should make sure that they are not giving up rights to your original work. To quote:
An investigation by The Times Higher has found that American Amazon has arrangements to sell academic articles via companies that secure the rights to the content of journals from thousands of publishers worldwide. …Amazon.com told The Times Higher: “We license content from various content aggregators, some of which secure rights to content from thousands of publishers.
On a completely different matter, as a follow up to my post last week. Back in 1977 a 19 year old Ken Linseman sued the World Hockey Association, which barred players younger than 20. The cite for the case is: Kenneth S. Linseman v. World Hockey Association, 439 F. Supp. 1315 (D. Conn. 1977). After he won the case, the NHL adopted the 18 year old draft as well.
Hi from Praha.
Under the Copyright Act, an assignment of rights must be express and must be in writing – leaving aside the employee work and work for hire issues. So don`t worry about assuming that the journal or publisher somehow acquired your rights. You have to be blind drunk not to notice what you`re surrendering.
Mark, do you mean Kennie “The Rat” Linseman?
I do indeed mean “The Rat”.
P.S. What happened to all the good nicknames?
Nicknames are great. Back when I used to organize our firm’s softball team I wrote a weekly game report and gave all the players a nickname, such as “The Arm” , “Hit-and-Run”, “Golden Glove”. A coworker named Vicky became “All-the-way-to-Victory”. Mine was kind of boring: “Convenor” Crosby. Never try to give yourself a nickname– well, George Costanza tried. Fortunately mine didn’t stick, either.