- 23 Aug 2014 07:28
#14455289
I'm of the opinion that scientific papers should be available online and that JSTOR et al are no longer necessary and acting only as gatekeepers that exploit researchers and authors for the benefit of their copyright licensing schemes.
I would support the piracy of academic journals, UP books (I've gotten some that are still in need of corrections and edits =P), and even raw data used for research purposes. I feel this way simply because the internet allows for it.
The internet has demonstrated that the cost of distributing digital goods reflects, not the cost of production (which has never actually been true), but the cost of distribution. You can download, copy and redistribute a file all over the world in a few seconds costing you only pennies (in terms of your ISP fees and electricity). The economic benefits of this are massive.
Remember when you spent $15 on a CD? Today you don't have to spend anything (again, other than ISP fees for access) to get what was on that CD. No resources are spent creating the physical CDs in the first place. Many say that the content creators will not get money and will not be incentivized to continue to create it. My response: Isn't that a better scenario? Doesn't that decentralize the production capital for those goods? Won't that limit the creation of new [research, art, music, digital good] to those that are dedicated to it? Think if movies, music, and tv were only created by the people who care about the content and who are not holding up administrators and executives on their shoulders.
If someone is poor, but brilliant (or merely in a second world country) they might never have access to the insane amount of information that is on the internet, even if it is simply locked behind closed doors at JSTOR. This creates a barrier of entry into the field of knowledge production that is inhumane.
Piracy is a word that is meant to be pejorative, but has the same definition as "sharing." Some claim that file-sharing is theft or stealing, but this assumes that the owner loses the utility of the object when it is shared. This is not true. If I steal your bicycle then you cannot ride it or sell it. I deprive you of the utility. But if I download your mp3 it does not stop you from listening to it or selling it to someone else.
Academics are, for the most part, pedantic and, from what I can tell here, not all that concerned with the welfare of humanity if, or when, it encroaches on your short term fiduciary situations. We need to look for methods of disassembling JSTOR and distributing it's responsibility out to different institutions that have knowledge creation in mind before they have the well being of JSTOR and the administrators in mind.
Aaron Swartz held convictions similar to these and was on the front lines of fighting this system. The battle is just beginning and there are no defenses against the propensity of the internet to reconstruct our economy along the lines of what can be created and disseminated and what cannot. Bread cannot be copied and sent to all of the hungry people in the world through the internet, but information, abstractly, can be. Every penny that is not spent on a digital good on the internet is a penny that could better yours or someone else's life off the internet.
Let's rethink accessibility.
I would support the piracy of academic journals, UP books (I've gotten some that are still in need of corrections and edits =P), and even raw data used for research purposes. I feel this way simply because the internet allows for it.
The internet has demonstrated that the cost of distributing digital goods reflects, not the cost of production (which has never actually been true), but the cost of distribution. You can download, copy and redistribute a file all over the world in a few seconds costing you only pennies (in terms of your ISP fees and electricity). The economic benefits of this are massive.
Remember when you spent $15 on a CD? Today you don't have to spend anything (again, other than ISP fees for access) to get what was on that CD. No resources are spent creating the physical CDs in the first place. Many say that the content creators will not get money and will not be incentivized to continue to create it. My response: Isn't that a better scenario? Doesn't that decentralize the production capital for those goods? Won't that limit the creation of new [research, art, music, digital good] to those that are dedicated to it? Think if movies, music, and tv were only created by the people who care about the content and who are not holding up administrators and executives on their shoulders.
If someone is poor, but brilliant (or merely in a second world country) they might never have access to the insane amount of information that is on the internet, even if it is simply locked behind closed doors at JSTOR. This creates a barrier of entry into the field of knowledge production that is inhumane.
Piracy is a word that is meant to be pejorative, but has the same definition as "sharing." Some claim that file-sharing is theft or stealing, but this assumes that the owner loses the utility of the object when it is shared. This is not true. If I steal your bicycle then you cannot ride it or sell it. I deprive you of the utility. But if I download your mp3 it does not stop you from listening to it or selling it to someone else.
Academics are, for the most part, pedantic and, from what I can tell here, not all that concerned with the welfare of humanity if, or when, it encroaches on your short term fiduciary situations. We need to look for methods of disassembling JSTOR and distributing it's responsibility out to different institutions that have knowledge creation in mind before they have the well being of JSTOR and the administrators in mind.
Aaron Swartz held convictions similar to these and was on the front lines of fighting this system. The battle is just beginning and there are no defenses against the propensity of the internet to reconstruct our economy along the lines of what can be created and disseminated and what cannot. Bread cannot be copied and sent to all of the hungry people in the world through the internet, but information, abstractly, can be. Every penny that is not spent on a digital good on the internet is a penny that could better yours or someone else's life off the internet.
Let's rethink accessibility.