MIT faculty, students and staff will now have access to the Society of Automotive Engineer's (SAE) technical papers over the web again. Last spring, the MIT libraries cancelled their web access to the SAE technical papers, because the society was imposing a Digital Rights Management (DRM) plug-in called FileOpen that was seen to impede normal scholarly use.
Professor of Mechanical Engineering and SAE fellow Wai Cheng presented MIT's concerns at the SAE's Publication Board meeting in April 2007. This resulted in an immediate stay of DRM implementation on university campuses, and ultimately in a changed policy in November 2007. According to this policy, FileOpen would not be required for university access to the SAE Digital Library.
While the MIT libraries have not been able to get all the assurances regarding SAE's plans for implementing other DRM tools in the future, MIT has decided to work with SAE in good faith.
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