Copyright Fail: 'Pirating' Academic Papers Not Only Commonplace, But Now Seen As Mainstream
from the icanhaz-#icanhazpdf dept
Techdirt has been writing about open access for many years. The idea and practice are certainly spreading, but they're spreading more slowly than many in the academic world had hoped. That's particularly frustrating when you're a researcher who can't find a particular academic paper freely available as open access, and you really need it now. So it's no surprise that people resort to other methods, like asking around if anyone has a copy they could send. The Internet being the Internet, it's also no surprise that this ad-hoc practice has evolved into a formalized system, using Twitter and the hashtag #icanhazpdf to ask other researchers if they have a copy of the article in question. But what is surprising is that recently there have been two articles on mainstream sites that treat the approach as if it's really quite a reasonable thing to do. Here's Quartz:
Most academic journals charge expensive subscriptions and, for those without a login, fees of $30 or more per article. Now academics are using the hashtag #icanhazpdf to freely share copyrighted papers.
And here's BBC News:
Scientists are tweeting a link of the paywalled article along with their email address in the hashtag -- a riff on the infamous meme of a fluffy cat’s "I Can Has Cheezburger?" line. Someone else who does have access to the article downloads a pdf of the paper and emails the file to the person requesting it. The initial tweet is then deleted as soon as the requester receives the file.In many countries, it's against the law to download copyrighted material without paying for it -- whether it's a music track, a movie, or an academic paper. Published research is protected by the same laws, and access is generally restricted to scientists -- or institutions -- who subscribe to journals.
Both stories go on to give some background to the approach and its hashtag. But what's striking is that after mentioning that this kind of activity may be against the law, there's none of the traditional hand-wringing about "piracy", and how it will end Western civilization as we know it unless tough measures are brought in to stop it.
But some scientists argue that their need to access the latest knowledge justifies flouting the law, and they're using a Twitter hashtag to help pirate scientific papers.
It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers. After all, such sharing lies at the heart of research, which derives much of its power from the fact that people can build on what has been found before, rather than being forced to re-discover old knowledge. The idea of locking away that knowledge behind paywalls, and making it hard for any researcher to access it, is so self-evidently absurd, that even mainstream publications like Quartz or BBC News apparently have no difficulty accepting that viewpoint, implicitly through their coverage, if not explicitly. It's a further sign of copyright's dwindling relevance in a world whose central technology -- the Internet -- is built on sharing and openness.
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Filed Under: academics, copyright, journals, knowledge, open access, papers, research, sharing
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"It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
BUT let's define "piracy" as non-academic. You can't say the same for empty entertainments -- that cost millions to make -- and which don't advance any good, and in fact, usually retard "progress". Therefore highly desirable to be locked up by copyright.
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Nope
Novels, graphic novels, movies, music, and graphic art are all the subjects of academic coursework, so as long as it might be taught in a course, it can be said to be academic.
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Re: Nope
To whom ... those who study Psychiatry - possibly English or Literature.
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Still Nope
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Re: Still Nope
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Re: "It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
The only "empty entertainments" that cost millions to make are films. Music, books, photographs, poetry, etc. are ridiculously cheap to make in comparison and still get the exact same protections. It's commercial film and film alone that has skewed copyright beyond reason.
So if you really believe one thing is fine and another thing is not, then we really just need a special copyright for movies.
In fact, considering the cost of academic research, most of those research papers probably cost more to make than most albums and books.
And if you actually believe that "empty entertainment" retard progress, then you have no respect for art or artists - or you just watch a lot of bad movies.
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He's not here to debate; he's here to be an asshole. Small wonder Whatever roots for him so hard.
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Corrected.
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Re: Re: "It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
... and most academic research is publicly funded making it free for the public to view - they paid for it, they get to see it sort of thing.
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Re: "It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
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Re: "It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
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Re: "It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
Then, as others pointed out, lets just abolish copy protection laws altogether since the works that are covered by them aren't any good and the purpose of copy protection laws is to promote the progress of works so that we can have more good works.
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Re: "It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
There's no judgment of value there. Thus, even empty entertainments constitute knowledge. Since they don't cause other works to vanish from the face of the earth, they do not harm the promotion of knowledge.
Locking knowledge up under copyright impairs the progress of knowledge, though -- it means that there are things we know which we cannot freely share or make use of without paying a toll. Maybe it can be tolerable, if the amount of progress caused by creating a work is greater than the impediment to progress caused by locking it up, but this depends on the precise amount and duration of copyright.
So predictably, you've fucked up your entire argument; if empty entertainments were of no great value with regard to knowledge, they would be least deserving of copyright, not most.
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Re: "It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers."
I am sure that Wiley, Reed Elsevier et al. disagree with you, as the academic publishing industry has been very profitable for them.
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Twitter not needed
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Some wanted to avoid any chance of getting caught and shared with every precaution from legal liability, but most simply found an easy way to circumvent the technical and legal restrictions with as little economic costs for the students.
Why? We had a semester where a simple booklet was sold for about 40$ in the shop (one of the cheapest materials we saw!). The exact materials found in the bookshop and other costs if we wanted to make a perfect replica would be about 15$.
Think about that: In royalties the professor might get 10 $ with an exceptional bookdeal and a hundred students. The total overhead for 100 students would be 25.000 $ and that doesn't take their cheaper vendors into account... The publishing sector has always been a hassle on universities because of those numbers, but they are simply becoming more expensive and more extortionistic to use as their subscriptions drop and alternatives become better (damn unfair competition).
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What royalties, academic journals do not pay any royalties to the authors.
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For purposes such as teaching, scholarship or research
“… for purposes such as … teaching… scholarship, or research…”
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Re: For purposes such as teaching, scholarship or research
I originally thought this article was going to comment on that, as it's something that is highlighted on here again and again -- copyright isn't just about "this is mine, pay me money to see it" -- no matter how much copyright maximalists would have you believe that. It also covers "let's find a fair way to share this information" and there are plenty of ways ot use copyright (open access etc.) to accomplish this. Elsevier notwithstanding, most academic publishers have no issue with individual articles being shared by the authors.
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Transformation
p.555 (p.22 in pdf)
p.556 (p.23 in pdf)
(Footnotes omitted; emphasis added.)
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When a single hard drive that you can get for $200 can hold years of audio without ever having to replay a song or audio clip how is anyone going to enforce copy protection laws? When a single hard drive can hold libraries and libraries of compressed text how can these laws be enforced academically when so many books and publications can fit onto a single hard drive?
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“In many countries, it's against the law to download copyrighted material without paying for it”
What is the important proviso missing from the above claim? “without permission”.
Why is this proviso so often omitted? It seems there is a widespread assumption that nobody gives permission for their stuff to be downloaded without paying for it. So much for Free Culture and Free Software, then...
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Assholes.
Any lawyers out there doing anything to advance scientific research? Thought not. So shut up. BTW, it's not "pirating" (assholes).
The legal system should not be at all surprised that phenomena like this happens. Nor will it ever stop. Assholes.
Stupid law. Assholes.
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Publishers aren't facilitating the production of these papers and they have only partial importance for distribution. It's the university system and government grants that drive it.
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So it's true. Educational materials, theses, scientific articles, etc. are often not freely available. I've also read before about certain services like https://sci-hub.se/ which help scientists and students gain access to certain scientific achievements, but this is still an obstacle for the world of scientists. I faced this problem too when I was writing my capstone project. I couln`d find the whole information I needed, so I had to use writing service, click here if you get into same trouble as me. This service helped me complete my project, but I'm still thinking about how to make the academic materials available without infringing copyright. Not an easy task.
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