This is much more like collective bargaining than giving up freedom. If a researcher individually says I will never assign copyright, then they will never get published. If a group of researchers (let's call it a union) bands together, then they get a lot more negotiating power.
> This is much more like collective bargaining than giving up freedom.
Well, it is giving up freedom, regardless of what it is like.
Keep in mind that there is a strong tradition in political discourse (in the U.S. at least) that using the word "freedom" is a signal that we are in favor of something, and thus, that "giving up freedom" is a negative thing. However, "freedom" is a word with a clear definition, and we can use it without intending the above signal.
So, it seems to me that this policy of Princeton's is a fine idea. It is nonetheless a reduction in the freedom of Princeton's faculty.
In contrast, at my own university the faculty contract explicitly assigns rights in their research to the researcher. The university gets a royalty-free license, but that's it. I have never had occasion to consider this contractual clause in a negative light, but here it is: my university could not enact a policy like Princeton's without violating the contract. (OTOH, my university is not nearly as big of a player as Princeton; at present such a policy would probably not be helpful.)
Keep in mind that there is a strong tradition in political discourse (in the U.S. at least) that using the word "freedom" is a signal that we are in favor of something, and thus, that "giving up freedom" is a negative thing.
While that's true, this is a discussion about negotiating in a game-theoretic context. "Giving up freedom" is usually associated with the game of chicken, whereby one party improves their outcomes by "removing their freedom" to select the chicken option. The ggp implies that this was the operating principle, when it in fact is not.
Saying that I have given up the freedom to give other people the copyright to my research, when that was precisely my goal in the first place, is IMHO a clear abuse of language. It's like saying a superbowl team has given up their freedom to lose the playoffs because they decided to practice too much. It's just ridiculous.
Then there's irony afoot - because by 'giving up freedom', they're gaining more freedom to do what they want to do.
Couching this in terms of freedom is the wrong way to think about the issue, methinks - it detracts from the real issue. Freedom in the US is a very politically charged word - as an outsider visiting the US, I could hear a capital F in the word almost every time I heard it in public.
In real terms, in the modern day, Americans are no freer than their contemporaries. They're a bit freer here and a bit less free there, but there's a lot of equivalence in the limitations of what you can do, both legally and culturally.
I certainly found when I visited the US for a while that there was nothing I felt I was freer to do legally (tourists don't really get to 'bear arms'), but plenty I couldn't do culturally - ironically mostly about speaking freely in public. I imagine an American visiting Australia would feel similar cultural restrictions, but again, no particular activity they're used to would be forbidden them legally.
I guess it just irritates when you run into those particular folks who define themselves as 'free' and making you out to be 'not free' by comparison.
But collective bargaining is giving up freedom to get more negotiating power. The union prevents its members from, e.g., working more than a certain number of hours; without that restriction, the members find themselves compelled to do so. Of course, the restriction couldn't exist without the union -- that you have a lot of people acting in concert here is important (since otherwise the restriction couldn't be enforced, and more imporantly for these purposes, would be seen as unenforceable). So in that sense it's not like the case where you deliberately break a machine you own to prevent yourself from having to use it. But both cases make use of this principle.
