I asked Mr Raimondi for information about the "many other sites" that have agreed to this copyright transfer, but he replied "for now this information is strictly confidential". I also asked for clarification of his understanding of copyright law in this context, and so far I have received no response.
This seems to be a new way for publishers to use information from the WWW. It would increase the visibility of a site, but the transfer of copyright is a significant issue. I do not intend to take up this offer. Would anyone else be tempted?
I've had a number of requests of this type regarding WebElements and have always denied them. I have allowed people to publish perhaps just 1 page while ensuring I retain copyright. A different issue might be who "owns" a site in the first place, the university or the author? While on the copyright issue, a regretable number of people have copied early flawed WebElements versions (some might say "even more flawed" versions!) without permission and republished them (both with and without) alterations. This has even extended to third generation copies. Most of these, but not all, have been coerced into removing the illegal copies. Has anyone else had piracy problems of this type? If so, what have you done about it? Dr Mark J Winter (Deputy Head of Department, Director of Studies) Department of Chemistry, The University, Sheffield S3 7HF, England tel: +44 (0)114 282 4498 fax: +44 (0)114 273 8673 e-m: mark.winter@sheffield.ac.uk http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/staff/mjw/mark-winter.html WebElements is the periodic table on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/web-elements/ The Sheffield Chemdex is a listing of chemistry sites on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~chem/chemdex/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)