At 09:44 AM 12/11/2012, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
I gather âchan.fusionâ is accusing Mr. Rothwell of using the lenr-canr
website specifically for the purposes of a tax dodge.
Oh, give me a tax break! I think not.
Yeah. I would assume that Jed is using another
approach. That is a charitable activity. It is
definitely *not* a profit-making business.
(If it were, he would be much more exposed to
liability if he errs and puts up a paper without
explicity copyright owner permission, which can
happen, given his methods. He depends on author
assurances, and he's found that actually
soliciting publisher permission is mostly a waste
of time. There is no cheese in it for publishers,
they ignore the requests, even if they don't
really care. Mostly what Jed posts is preprints
and most of the publishers allow those. They
mostly don't allow an actual as-published PDF.
Krivit takes a different approach, which is also
sort-of legal: he publishes under a claim of "fair use." Jed does not do this.
Krivit, again, is operating as a noprofit. That
he might be getting a salary from his organizatioh does not negate that.
Both Krivit and Rothwell can deal with legal
issues, rather easily, by following the DCMA
takedown rules. Essentially, if the copyright
owner objects, take the material down first and
ask questions later. A for-profit publisher might
have much more legal responsibility, given the profit motive.
As to operating nonprofit, it's a bit more
involved, but a nonprofit organization can pay
expenses. This can also happen without actual
incorporation, it's merely less solid and more
likely to be challenged. "Unincorporated association."
There are rules about deducting donations to the
nonprofit. Jed is asking for donations toward
expenses. These don't just directly help. If
there are significant donations not from him, he
might be more able to deduct his own donations. It can get complicated.
Lenr-canr.org itself is a legitimate nonprofit
activity. It does not quality as a "business," my guess.
I have no idea of chan.fusion was talking about
Jed. He certainly was not explicit.
