You must be vigilant when you sign a license for digital information products. According to the legislative history of the Copyright Act, "[n]othing in the bill derogates from the rights of parties to contract with each other and to sue for breaches of contract.…"[1] You must look out for your library, and for those who use it. This includes other libraries, too, because librarians share information through interlibrary lending and document delivery, as permitted by section 108.
One way to examine the good, the bad, and the ugly that you may find in license agreements is to take a look at a license. Let's look at the online subscription agreement for journals from the American Meteorological Society,[2] with our comments added.
American Meteorological Society
Journals Online Subscription Agreement
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Comment: Access via IP addresses is good. This way users working in your library won't have to manage their own passwords. If your library uses a proxy server—a local computer that serves as an intermediary between off-site users and the subscribed online resources—authorized users can access the resource from any computer, anywhere.
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Comment: Essential. Users obviously need to be able to search through the licensed information.
- ↑ H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 132.
- ↑ American Meteorological Society, Journals Online Subscription Agreement, available at http://www.ametsoc.org/pubs/subscribe/elicense.pdf. © American Meteorological Society. Reprinted with permission.
