Dear Guy L (and others),
As these publication/copyright issues are central to our discussion, let me just draw your attention to the "Open access initiative" against the lobbys of publishers.
I knew something about this initiative which is also discussed here under several aspects: - protecting the intellectual property of researchers - intention of publishers to make as much profit as possible - all the work done for free by the authors and al the money taken by the publishers - impossibility for our library to renew our memberships due to cost reasons.
In the case of our actual IFIP copyright problems I see at least three different trends: 1. Keep the copyrights for IFIP events in IFIP. Klaus Brunnstein whom I reached this morning said: "If we don't keep the copyrights then we can close our shop". 2. Transfer them from IFIP to IEEE. (What a ridiculous idea!). 3. Keep them with the producers, i.e. the young scientists. 4. Give the copyright to a publisher but allow the author to use the results freely (e.g. by putting them on their own web page). Klaus Brunstein has just informed me that the official IFIP publisher (new Springer) has agreed that this will be allowed!
Best regards Otto