>>Hold on a minute. Do you think the inclusion of a single carefully constructed mountweazel might not just indicate a high degree of professionalism and care?
NO. It implies a selfish disregard for the user of their product. Let's protect ourselves at the expense of our reader, who turns to us for the facts.
>>Might not copyright protection serve to ensure the integrity of the material?
No. A document doesn't have integrity when it is not accurate. Making sure people don't copy you doesn't make you exact, or more reliable, it just makes you un-copy-able.
Say they didn't have "esquivalience" in the dictionary, would that make them less accurate, or more accurate? It would definitely be more accurate.
And if somebody copied them because they didn't have esquivalience, would that diminish their acuracy? No it wouldn't, not one whit.
The copier is not my concern. A cheater is a cheater and I have no truck with that. I turn to a dictionary because I believe what they tell us has merit and is exact.
If you take the trouble to use the OED, you expect it to be reliable - it's not Billy-Bob's dikshinary of werds for heaven's sake.
