I can understand your point (about point #3 trumping the others); I hadn’t thought that out fully, I guess.

I still think #1 and #2 as general informal principles hold true, though. In other words, the advent of licensing as a whole has had the effect of restricting copyright. Also for those licenses (the vast majority, in my experience) that are provided by the vendor, the balance of power (for lack of a better way of putting it) definitely favors the publisher or vendor. In a way that could be thought of as similar to the Google Print Program and its insistence on the onus for opting out being on the publisher side. My point is that vendor-supplied licenses generally put the onus on librarians, not on the vendor.

These informal principles were pronounced in the context of introducing licensing to graduate library students, almost all of whom have no experience in evaluating licenses of any sort. Although medical librarians, I’m sure, have had to become savvy in this area for a while, I would still assert that there is a vast group of libraries and librarians who still do not look carefully enough at them and who possess imperfect processes for handling them, too.

Thanks for commenting!