8 ms·
Defend Elsevier? I think not. I am currently working with a startup that has to do with prescription drug refilling. Obviously, interactions between drugs an
by cubano 11y ago
Defend Elsevier? I think not.
I am currently working with a startup that has to do with prescription drug refilling. Obviously, interactions between drugs and such can have fatal consequences if not understood, so we responsibly are providing that information to our users.
Elsevier provides an API for that data, but wanted to charge around $40k/year for access. Our business model is of course free to users (we charge the pharmacies a modest monthly fee)
$40k/yr simply too damn high...so potentially life-and-health saving information is kept from the people whom need it the most.
Yes we did eventually find a lower cost provider, but as far as shedding tears for Elsevier?
Hell fucking no.
- return0 11y agoI'm pretty sure that all the insiders know how bad it is. but still some people see it as an affront to the free market.
- wolfgke 11y agoCopyright laws are an affront to the free market, since they don't allow selling what one wants or what the customert wants. Instead one can only sell what the copyright holder allows.
- whiddershins 11y agoCopyright laws are a finite duration social and legal grant to the creators of intellectual property with the intention of encouraging creation of work. It is artificial relative to a particular vision of a "free" market, but the same could be said about any of the mechanisms that structure the market, thereby allowing it to function. In order to have a market you must have some rules. So what we do is try to figure out what rules work well and which ones impede things. Copyright/Patent/Trademark isn't a priori bad. It has funded many musicians, writers, inventors, painters, etc. It has often been referred to as one of the great innovations of Enlightenment era free-market practice. It allowed generations of thinkers to have compensation when previously the only form of wealth was goods and land backed up by physical violence. This is a nuanced topic, and I think it makes sense to treat it as such.
- wolfgke 11y ago> Copyright/Patent/Trademark isn't a priori bad. It has funded many musicians, writers, inventors, painters, etc. There is no reason why one can't pay money even when copyright laws wouldn't exist. I often do, for exampl for open source projects or for free ebooks where the author still asks for a donation if one can afford. The only difference is that the creator cannot force you, which I consider as a good thing.
- dalke 11y agoThat's the patronage or tip jar model. It has also funded many people. But not as many as the copyright model. To flip your force model around, you cannot force people to create for you. But the hope of future money does provide incentive to many of them. Robert Heinlein, for example, started writing in order to pay of his mortgage.
- wolfgke 11y ago> To flip your force model around, you cannot force people to create for you. But the hope of future money does provide incentive to many of them. But who says that this future money has to be enforced by copyright laws? It is also possible by either asking for donations (from which for example Tarn and Zach Adams, the creators of Dwarf Fortress, live) or something similar to Kickstarter/Indiegogo (the product won't be created/released until some money is donated). So in other words: Even this incentive wouldn't be killed if there were no copyright laws.
- dalke 11y ago>who says that this future money has to be enforced by copyright laws I certainly didn't. I don't think there's anyone who says that copyright laws make it illegal to commission an artist. > Even this incentive wouldn't be killed if there were no copyright laws Yes, there are at least three systems (patron, tip jar, and copyright monopoly) to make money as a writer or artist.
- ikeboy 11y agoSuppose you needed 40k/yr of AWS computing time and couldn't afford it. And suppose someone hacked into AWS and redistributed it for free. As far as I can tell, if the argument you made is correct, you should support the same argument that says the AWS hacker is right. (To address the two obvious rebuttals, viz 1. Marginal cost and 2. Sci hub is getting data from those who have a subscription, merely in violation of ToS: 1. Marginal cost for AWS is likely low, if there's any unused CPU time. 2. Change the scenario slightly to someone signing up for a bunch of free AWS accounts and handing those out. )
- cubano 11y agoMy "argument", if I was even making one, was that the cost to Elsevier to provide an API, is a tiny fraction of $40k/yr, and thus their business practices and model is all about rent-seeking and not about saving peoples lives, which I personally find disgusting.
- ikeboy 11y agoIf hypothetically, Amazon was making 80% margins on AWS, would that make them disgusting? Edit: note that Elsevier's margins are around 30-40%; I don't know if the particular API you wanted has higher margins.
- cubano 11y agoIn general, no, unless of course they were using that margin in a way that endangered low-income people's health. I mean really...I can't believe I have to defend this position. There is obviously certain types of data that should be provided as a public service to all of society...is this even to be debated?
- ikeboy 11y agoThe example I gave above was where you needed the processing power to run your medical startup. >There is obviously certain types of data that should be provided as a public service to all of society "Should" what's meant by that? If you want data to be open, you need to fund that, or develop your own and release that freely. Statements of the kind "everyone deserves scarce resource X" really mean "we should tax rich people in order to subsidize X for poor people". Which is a fine thing to argue for, but don't present it as a universal right.
- matwood 11y agoIt's amazing the logic hoops their supporters go through. I can't find the site (it was linked from another journal article on HN) again right now, but I went to a journal trade site once and started reading the comments. The article was about open access, scihub, and how journals needs to be ready, but the comments I could only assume were paid shills. There was one guy whose position was that journals needed to limit access because the layperson would not understand what they were reading. He was questioning a person employed in home care who admitted to use SciHub to read topics she was interested in because according to him she had no need for that knowledge. This is what open access to knowledge is up against.
- pak 11y agoYou are probably talking about the comments for this article: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/02/sci-hub-and-the-four-horsemen-of-the-internet/ http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/02/sci-hub-and-th... I agree, some of the opinions tossed around by incumbents in the industry are mind-blowing. My favorites: "A PDF is a weapons-grade tool for piracy." ...And on parents of sick kids looking up articles: "Do you really think a search and downloading of technical medical literature means anything?"
- chris_wot 11y agoAnd they wonder why NaturalNews and other anti-vaccination sites get so many hits. The arguments they are using are utterly indefensible. They now have a real problem. They were able to be gatekeepers in the U.S. and other Western nations, but the instant one nation doesn't play ball and publishes all the material as it doesn't recognise international copyright... well, this has parallels to when India refused to recognise pharmaceutical patents. They had to rapidly change their business model to more favourable terms, because it suddenly (!!!) became clear to the pharmaceutical industry that this could destroy the value of their patents.
- matwood 11y agoThat's the one. Thanks!
- 11y ago
- thaw13579 11y agoNot to defend Elsevier, but 40k/year (entry level salary for one employee), doesn't sound high if it's life saving information...
- return0 11y agoit is, if you think that it's not their research, it's catalogued from public research that was given to them for free.
- thaw13579 11y agoIt's a complex topic though. The papers are distinct from the research (and public money), and the authors willfully give publishers the rights to their writing. This is also not "free" but in exchange for prestige for promotions, etc. I don't think this is a good system though, but it's legal. NIH does require open access after one year for publicly funded work, at least, but I think a better solution is to require summary reports submitted directly to NIH for every project.
- return0 11y agoEven better would be to do away with reports and journal articles that only report a tiny fraction experimental data, and focus more on "selling" the science rather than reporting it. I suspect there is a very large overlap in research, thousands of animals are being killed needlessly, simply because the data that is not published in articles is discarded, even though they could be useful for other studies.
- Chinjut 11y ago40k/year sounds quite high for life-saving information. Life-saving information should be free (or, rather, whatever necessary costs it has should be socialized).
- thaw13579 11y agoI think that's a great point--socialization is a solution that should be considered a realistic option. It seems like publishing would have a comparable bureaucratic load to that faced by science funding agencies.
- KKKKkkkk1 11y agoWhy do you expect Elsevier to subsidize a for-profit enterprise?
- rdl 11y agoThat seems vastly more defensible (liability, actual derivative work, etc.) than them charging for journals, tbh.