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Recently I participated as a speaker at the meeting "Vitreoretinal Interfaces" in San Francisco, Calif. The speakers were asked to provide some extended text material and slides before the meeting to prepare for a CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory) recording of their presentation. This request puzzled me. While I admired the modern possibilities of distributing knowledge, I began to have more and more reservations about this approach.
A question arises. How can a presentation ever be published when its contents are already legally transferred? The present policy of major journals forbids previous publication of the same material.
I find this approach objectionable if money should be made from the sale of the discs (which was not the case at this meeting) and authors are not included in the revenue. I foresee the possibility that a copyright transfer be requested at each meeting to legalize these sales.
With the ability to