More About Amazon's Selling of Law Review Articles

From a memo posted by Marlyn Robinson, senior
reference librarians at the Tarlton Law Library,
U. of Texas -Austin, on the LAWLIB law
librarians' listserv, 4/28/2005:

"In 2002 Amazon and Gale Publishing (a
subsidiary of Thomson) began an online sales
program by selling Gale-produced e-documents,
mostly student study guides for literature and
business planning guides for small business
owners. They have now branched into what
appears to be all Gale databases.

... If you compare a list of law reviews for sale on
Amazon, you will see they correspond to the full text
articles available via the LegalTrac index. Most of the
articles in this database have a citation only, but some
have abstracts and some have full text. Obviously,
this is resulting from Gale's license with the specific
journals.

Thomson/Gale has the following caveat on the main
page of its databases:

'Thomson Gale respects the intellectual property of others.
The licensors of all articles appearing in our databases have
assured us that they have the right to authorize electronic
distribution of the materials they provide to us. If you are a
writer, and if you have questions or concerns regarding
the electronic distribution of your materials, we
recommend that you contact your publisher directly.

If you dispute the right of your publisher to authorize
electronic distribution, you may provide us with a written
notification of your claim and we will disable access to
the materials.'"