From: Eric M. Dashofy (edashofy@ics.uci.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 15 2000 - 11:23:10 PDT
Well, I came across an article on Slashdot, and I was a little intrigued by
it.
http://slashdot.org/yro/00/08/14/2019202.shtml
Basically, there is a site (http://www.contentville.com/) (with the help of
another company, UMI (http://www.umi.com/ )) that has compiled a database of
academic dissertations and is selling them. I saw the theses of several
folks I know on there, just doing a quick spot-check, including Greg Bolcer,
Neno Medvidovic, Ken Anderson, Michal Young, etc. Their dissertations are
selling for about $25 each in PDF format. According to the site:
--begin excerpt
Where do Contentville's dissertations come from?
Excerpts from the UMI® Dissertation Abstracts database are being used by
Contentville, which, in turn, collects orders for full-text dissertations.
Dissertation orders are fulfilled by UMI® Dissertations Publishing, whose
mission is to expand scholarly communication and improve access to academic
research. All Dissertation Publishing Agreements with authors remain in
effect. Dissertation authors retain all rights to their dissertations. All
sales will be tracked for royalty payments. All contracted royalties will be
paid, per the agreement. The UMI program continues to expand access to
research and maintain a permanent archive of scholarly works. Wider
distribution of dissertation research is intended to support the
international scholarly community.
--end excerpt
I usually find myself on the "a lot of information should probably be free
(available), especially academic works used for educational purposes" side
of a debate, but these folks are SELLING other people's work. I don't know
the exact copyright laws/restrictions regarding academic dissertations, but
this might be worth a look if you're worried about your copyrights being
infringed and collecting appropriate royalties, etc.
Best Regards,
--Eric Dashofy
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