In reply to Cameron Neylon.

Creating real world comparisons to abstract concepts is a difficult thing to pull off.Â  Over at The Scholarly Kitchen today, Kent Anderson made a similar attempt that made his point, but fell apart upon close examination. That's probably why we revere those who have a facility for making abstract concepts concrete, great teachers like Richard Feynman or Edward Tufte so much. The analogy I've used, at least to illustrate the problem with the "taxpayer funded it so taxpayer must get it for free" argument is the NYC subway or bridges and tunnels. But those comparisons have their limits as well.

But the point is an interesting one. Publishers likely see new forms of re-use as potential income streams because so many of them are proposed by for-profit startups. Just as many researchers feel resentment toward publishers who take the work they've done, add some services on top of it and turn a profit, so the publishers react the same way to companies that take the work the publishers have done, add some service on top and (at least hope to) profit. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned in both directions...

Given the nature of copyright law though, publishers can claim a right to a share of those derivative works. As you've addressed here and elsewhere, the copyright status of such works is undergoing close examination and potential change. But it should probably come as no surprise when a rights holder does what the law allows them to do in order to drive profits. One of the institutions I was at was licensing their patented cell lines to biotech companies like Genentech for use in further research. I'm not sure it's all that different.