Part of a mutually beneficial relationship is for both parties to show
respect for the concerns of the other party. If we are going to be in
this business, we can't afford to give them the impression that we
don't care about copyright, because they do, and what's good for them,
is good for us.
On the other hand, we also have our concerns: academic freedom, free
exchange of ideas, data, etc. While the situation is still far from
perfect, it has improved a lot over the past decade or two, thanks in
large part to the publishers' senstivity to our concerns. In addition
to the gifts that John Milton mentioned in his note, I would also like
to thank Collins for working with the ACL/DCI to make the CED
available to quite a number of researchers under quite reasonable
conditions. This experience paved the way for quite a number of
fruitful relationships between publishers and data-collection
organizations like the CLR and the LDC.
I'd like to believe that we've done as well as we have because we have
been working together with the publishers, and that we probably
wouldn't have as much data as we have if we had been working at cross
purposes. So, I'd hate to ruin it all now by giving them the
impression that we're out to rip them off...
Ken Church