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The issue here is not whether these publishers will allow or ignore quotations of excerpts (there is every reason to assume one could quote from the dictionaries in an online publication without fearing repercussions): rather, any author or editor of digital texts who needs to publish words from texts should be concerned that these licenses appear at all, claiming ownership of words that should be in the public domain, however insignificant a threat to scholarship they might seem in practice. As Howard Knopf, IP lawyer and Chairman of the Copyright Policy Committee of the Canadian Bar Association, has warned,

The better publishers will have to adapt [to the increasing use of open access texts in education]. The less adaptable will probably resort to litigation and, in Canada, greater reliance on collective licensing—even when there’s little or no basis for it. Don’t [expect]Access Copyright in Canada to go gently into the night as “open source” electronic resources in the educational and other sectors threaten their photocopy based foundation, which was never very solid anyway.
One great worry, of course, is that the promise of better and…cheaper text books and resources could be turned into an Orwellian nightmare if DRM is deployed in ways that could allow for censorship, revisionism, “memory hole” deletion, and other means of control by state or private interests. Other means could include the prevention of fair use (fair dealing in Canada), the prevention of cutting and pasting, the prevention of “read aloud” features (as Amazon has also recently done), the prevention of access to the public domain, and other excessive exercises of copyright.
The recent Kindle fiasco shows that all of this … is not only possible but probable.
This once again shows how we need protection from DRM much more than we need protection for it. Howard P. Knopf, “DRM and the Demise of Textbooks?” EXCESS COPYRIGHT . (External Link)

Knopf's argument emphasizes the imperative for those of us working in the digital humanities, in online research, and in education, to be aware of and participate in formulating the practices of online publishing, scholarship and education.

Also problematic are commercial databases such as Gale’s Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Chadwyck-Healey’s Early English Books Online , commercial enterprises that have taken images of public domain texts and claimed copyright, thus limiting their use in digital editions and research. I will preface this commentary with the acknowledgment that my work has hugely benefitted from access to both EEBO and ECCO, and their involvement with the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) program will be of tremendous value to participating libraries. However, as an educator and a digital researcher, I have serious misgivings about Gale’s Terms and Conditions:

The subscribing institutes (“Customer”) and their authorized users, may make a single print, non-electronic copy of a permitted portion of the content for personal, non-commercial, educational purposes only. Except as expressly provided for in the foregoing sentence, you may not modify, publish, transmit (including, but not limited to, by way of e-mail, facsimile or other electronic means), display, participate in the transfer or sale of, create derivative works based on, or in any other way exploit any of the Content, in whole or in part without the prior written consent of Gale and (if applicable) its licensor.… In the event of any permitted copying, redistribution or publication of the Content, such use shall be for personal, non-commercial, educational use only and no changes in or deletion of author attribution, trademark legend or copyright notice shall be made. (External Link) .

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Source:  OpenStax, Online humanities scholarship: the shape of things to come. OpenStax CNX. May 08, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11199/1.1
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