Com- mittee that ALA earns some revenue from the rights that authors would keep under the revised agreement. I'm basically in agreement with this argument, but I don't want librarians to look naive in dealing with the faculty. The letter is a response to my request for a response to the Re- search Triangle copyright document which I sent him. I was interested to read the paper you sent me on copyright and the sugges- tion in it that authors should retain copyright and not assign it to the publisher. Nevertheless, the proposal that authors should retain copyright does make us uneasy.
Publishers moreover have more resources than individuals for litigation.
This would erode the money available for legitimate peer-group review, the possibility of employing discerning editors, etc., and the needs of authors to have their photographs reproduced at high resolution. I do not think that copy- right retention is the way to deal with the matter. I have just read, with some sense of bemusement, a number of items relating to the proposed Triangle libraries statement regarding copyright assignment for scholarly publications. Both assume that the copyright itself is an extremely valuable commodity which must be retained for ensuring their viability and legitimate ends. In our economy, making a profit is not a criminal offense, and customers retain the right to select the best product at the lowest cost.