ABSTRACT
Beginning in the 1980s, the development of information and communications technologies (ICT) and computer networking introduced massive change to practices for distributing scholarly and scientific materials like journal articles. ICT and mass digitization led to changes in the nature of the available material, what attributes of content users valued, control over access and use of a work, and pricing and packaging. From a publisher perspective, ICT and networking increased risks of unauthorized copying and redistribution, thereby encouraging development of a controversial set of technologies known as technological protection measures (TPM), designed to control how users access or use digital works. This chapter tells one exemplary story of the effects of these changes using the case of the
implementation and subsequent retraction of a TPM and a new “token” pricing model (explained later) in the SAE Digital Library (SAE-DL) in 2006 and 2007. The SAE-DL is published by SAE International (formerly known as the Society for Automotive Engineers) which publishes research and other materials in the transportation engineering fields (Post 2005, Sherman 1980). Implementation of the TPM and a required move to token pricing in 2006 created a backlash among users and led to a widespread cancellation of the SAE-DL by academic engineering libraries. Pressure from academic stakeholders ultimately led SAE to remove the TPM in 2007 and abandon the token pricing requirement a year later. In telling the story of the SAE-TPM controversy, I have three goals. First, I use the science
and technology studies (STS) concepts inscription and anti-programs to explain stakeholder’s negative reaction to theTPM and the token pricing model. I use interview, listserv, and observational evidence to show how stakeholders’ work practices and values conflicted with assumptions inscribed in the TPM and the token pricing. In explaining, I demonstrate how analysis of pricing is an integral part of sociotechnical analysis of user interaction with media distribution systems. Second, I trace the anti-program actions taken against theTPM and pricing model by stakeholders, highlighting alignments and slippages between the groups. I use the
SAE story to demonstrate a common challenge in scholarly communications reform: the difficulties of maintaining stakeholder unity to press publishers for pricing change. Finally, I complicate this book’s theme of “disruption” and suggest an alternative metaphor of constant renegotiation to describe how the terms and conditions for acquisition of published works have always been in flux. To set the background for the story of the SAE-DL, I first describe major changes intro-
duced by mass digitization of scholarly works, including changes to the nature of the available material, how users access materials, valued attributes of content, control over access and use of a work, and pricing. Stakeholders most important to my story include the publishers who distribute the work (SAE), end users (faculty and students) and intermediary users (librarians/information managers) who acquire works from publishers on behalf of a larger end user community.
