Just so we’re clear, it’s not obvious nor is the general public misunderstanding anything. There are not a lot of situations like that with basically any other thing that has been monetized. I am a filmmaker. Even if I directed, produced, and starred in the film, I cannot necessarily send you a copy for free even if I want to (legally). There are other parties involved that restrict what I can and can’t do with the product, typically film festivals until the festival circuit is done and then distributors.
This is very common and most people just kind of assume It to be the case with academic journals.
Stop making excuses and send me that film you made. I know you want to do it.
now I’m wondering if you think your filmmaking skills are bad or if your film involves you using firearms on garbage cans.
There are other parties involved that restrict what I can and can’t do
I’m going to guess it’s got something to do with the high cost of creating the actual film reel that gives creditors the power to dictate access to the film as per a contract.
You see how that may be different yet?
It is different, but tbf academics are also reliant on external funding sources to conduct research. It’s not absurd to think that the grant writers or university administration might have some stipulations about the free distribution of research they paid for.
Have we forgotten what happened to Aaron Swartz? With the state of the world today, I naturally expect everything to be monetized, regardless of whether it makes any rational or ethical sense.
To be fair though, the people who fund the research are not the people who lose out if the publisher isn’t paid their £30. They are very often governmental or inter-governmental research agencies and programmes. Realistically it is rare for anyone except from the publisher to care about free distribution. The publishers are however pretty vicious (e.g. Swartz’s case).
Can anyone point to the law on this? I am in science and still was under this impression. Why is film different? I do share papers but I always thought I was doing so in the shadows. When I want to republish an image I’ve created that I’ve used in another paper I need to ask the publisher for permission to do so (this is pretty explicit) and then cite that source in the new publication. Ive assumed the publisher now owns my words as well and that I cant just share that with anyone. If that’s not true what sets it apart from your film? Can I share it as much as I’d like? Can I just put all my pdfs on my instutional public facing website? Does funding source matter at all?
Usually, for academic journals, you can retain most of your copyrights and grant a license to the journal. You have to pay attention to the options they give you when going through the publishing process, though. Because it does depend.
Some funding sources require that you retain certain copyrights in order to comply with things like public access mandates.
