I have received this message from McGraw Hill Italy:

From: marketing <marketing@mcgraw-hill.iunet.it> Subject: Re: authorisation request

Dear Dr J.M. Goodman, this letter is sent to you from McGraw Hill Libri Italia S.r.l., a publisher (which you surely know) specialized, among other things, in computer science publications. After looking at Web site named:<cambridge university, university chemistry laboratory,silicon graphics teaching laboratory (UK)>, we think that it would be interesting to insert it entirely in a cd-rom, that belongs to a series of products for the off-line navigation. McGraw Hill is carring out this product and so we ask you the copyright free of charge for the settlement (images,texts,sounds) of the above-mentioned site. Please be informed that many other sites contacted by us have already sent us their consensus to the operation. It is clear that through this operation you will surely have a great advantage in terms of visibility of your site also in reaching users who are off-line navigators. We ask you to send us your reply as soon as possible, because the timing for product realisationis extremely short and there are many other sites to contact. We are sure that the present initiative will arouse your interest, so we thank you in advance for the cooperation that you will grant us. Yours faithfully Italo Raimondi Managing Director McGraw Hill Libri Italia S.r.l.

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? Jonathan Dr J M Goodman jmg11@cam.ac.uk Tel:01223 336434 FAX:01223 336362 http://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/CUCL/staff/jmg.html Sec:01223 336342 Department of Chemistry, Lensfield Road, Cambridge, CB2 1EW ----- 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)