Information Research Weblog

I'm posting this as a 'Reply' to my earlier message because I am reproducing here a message from Euan Semple to the IR-DISCUSS mailing list. Euan says:

"This group may be interested in the project called Creative Commons run by Porfessor Larry Lessig from Stanford University.

Basically it allows creators of content to explicitly state what for which purposes copying is permitted rather than current copyright law which assumes copyright in all circumstances. They have developed a very user friendly web based process which as Larry says produces Human Readable copyright, machine readable copyright and lawyer reader copyright.

The process is explained at Creative Commons and there is a very good flash movie explaining the context."

I've taken a look and it seems to me that, if Information Research authors were to agree, upon submitting a paper, that a Creative Commons licence would apply to their work, it would nicely establish the appropriate copyright relationships. If you've submitted a paper to IR, please take a look at Creative Commons and let me know what you think. In the meantime, I shall 'talk' with Creative Commons to see how it would work.