I was forwarded this by @GeoffArnold; I suspect we’re of a like mind, that access to science being gatekeeper’d by societies and publishers is only one rung down from the RIAA/MPAA trainwreck.

Dan Wallach is sound. Go read his post.

Last June, I wrote about the decision at the business meeting of IEEE Security & Privacy to adopt the USENIX copyright policy, wherein authors grant a right for the conference to publish the paper and warrant that they actually wrote it, but otherwise the work in question is unquestionably the property of the authors. As I recall, there were only two dissenting votes in a room that was otherwise unanimously in favor of the motion.

Fast forward to the present. The IEEE Security & Privacy program committee, on which I served, has notified the authors of which papers have been accepted or rejected. Final camera-ready copies will be due soon, but we’ve got a twist. They’ve published the new license that authors will be expected to sign. Go read it.

read more at: IEEE blows it on the Security & Privacy copyright agreement | Freedom to Tinker.