Most VLE pages require a login (and so can’t be access by Google etc), and the web logs for the journal (which would show a ‘referer’ – the page the user came from to which the journal) we be on the Ebsco servers.

Are Ebsco sharing their log files with Harvard?

Chris

At stake is not just the issue of deep-linking as a web feature but more fundamentally it hits on three nerves: whether or not deep-linking is permissible under copyright and under the current terms and conditions of database usage: if it is, then Harvard would seem to have little right to ask for additional payment just because libraries make a cost-sensible decision to use the advantages of that technology,
regardless of how this affects Harvard’s bottom line. Also the very important and highly contentious question of Harvard assuming a right to dictate (and EBSCO acquiescing) to EBSCO the individual conditions that any single libraries will have imposed on them and which may be called “punitive” : equally EBSCO’s acquiescence to go along with this command – if our contracts of access are with EBSCO, then surely
they are not with Harvard? Nowhere in my recollection is there an agreement that costs to a content provider may be increased at will for whomever Harvard feels owes them some “loss-of-revenue”
penalty? And may other publishers then follow suit? of content to EBSCO might dictate

Lastly, is the most worrying underlying principle of all and one that should be ringing really loud warning bells to all libraries who believe they are free to use new technologies to advance their service deliveries – if Harvard can postulate what they see as a “loss-of revenue” case, on what arguable and measurable basis may we debate the extent of that loss – and for how may years into the future and at what rate? if you consider this point alone it becomes quite ridiculous. Could Harvard for example argue that they think we could have made more use in two years time of course packs and that their revenue COULD
have gone up and on that basis increase annually the additional deep-linking charge to what they feel MIGHT HAVE been ??

What exactly could the future look like for any of us if any commercial provider can get away with imposition of a cost on a “perceived” loss of revenue, a cost which, in the absence of any actual transactional data must in effect be an arbitrarily derived figure?