Professor Harnad suggests that although "the idea of joint ownership of research reports by the author and the author's institution needs to be analyzed in detail, ... it is not obvious that it would diminish the rights or conflict with the needs of the authors of refereed-journal papers." But it surely would do so if the institution decided, via its administrators or trustees, that it didn't want its intellectual property given away by being made freely available on-line, either in an archive like that at Los Alamos or on any other Web site, including its own. In an era in which the control of institutions of higher learning and research is largely in the hands of people who believe that the acme of wisdom is attained in the maxim that "there is no such thing as a free lunch", it is surprising to find Professor Harnad saying that "where there is no question of seeking royalty or fee for the text, one's university can only be an ally, one would think." Well, I can only say that I wouldn't think that. Surely there is reason to think rather that the coming years are likely to see much contention and perhaps even litigation between faculty and their institutions as the administrators of the latter attempt to gain control of Internet communication which they perceive as affecting their institutional interests and of which they may or may not perceive the real value. Why let oneself in for the dangers in such a dependent arrangement, unless one is circumstantially compelled to do so? In any case, I still cannot see how this sort of pact with university administration can be said to be "being pursued implicitly by all researchers who submit their preprints and reprints to the Los Alamos Physics Preprint Archive."
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