5 ms·

I believe what was being referred to is the legal standpoint. The paid journals are an absurdity, but there is only one right course of action: Not using them.

I believe what was being referred to is the legal standpoint. The paid journals are an absurdity, but there is only one right course of action: Not using them. Submit no content, pay no subscriptions. Let them whither and die. With more and more universities joining in on open access, this should become easier and easier. However, they still legally hold the rights to what they have, and thus releasing their content in public is still illegal. You'd have to get the original authors to legally release it elsewhere, which they might not even have the rights to. Killing them by stealing the content which they legally yet immorally sell and have the rights to is neither just nor impressive, and gives them a chance to cry "Foul!". Do not give them that chance.

enriquto 8y ago
> gives them a chance to cry "Foul!". Do not give them that chance. They can cry whatever they want. I want them to disappear in great pain!
- arghwhat 8y ago
  Then don't give them the legal weaponry to fight back.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    They already have the weaponry. They have captured the content people need to advance science and learning. That's already lost, we can't re-fight that battle. The choice now is to either use SciHub to access that content by other means, or voluntarily avoid doing this - thus granting them the spoils of the victory, and hope to maybe, maybe have some content free in the next one. I don't see how not voluntarily granting them the spoils makes anything worse for me - the legal system is always on their site, and that won't change in my lifetime. So it's either no access to papers for me, and hoping that maybe my grandkids will have some - or SciHub.
leereeves 8y ago
> the content which they legally yet immorally sell The real foul is when the government enforces immoral laws.
- class4behavior 8y ago
  If you allow illegal activity as a form of protest—when it is not the absolutely last option—, then you negate the legitimacy of the law in general. So even if you argue your illegal action was the best possible measure to move society forward, you still have to accept the consequences for breaking the law. In this case it is the presence of a legal device allowing to censor copyright-infringing sources which is bad; that is, censorship is not even limited to (very) serious crimes anymore. As a result the government is building the legal and physical infrastructure to manipulate communication via the internet. This will only embolden more authoritarian regimes in their pursuit to isolate and nationalize their internet infrastructure.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    The best way to get a law changed is for everyone to be breaking it all of the time. Laws only works because everyone follows it most of the time. If everyone is breaking a law, the government can't punish everyone, and eventually people start to wonder why it is a law in the first place. We've seen this happen with other laws in the past, quite often. Pot legalization comes to mind.
    - class4behavior 8y ago
      Everyone is the magic word here. Reality isn't that trivial unfortunately and we aren't talking about instances where this approach worked, but whether this kind of approach is justifiable as a general procedure. While pot legalization is going well, there's also an opioid crisis. Does that mean we should further deregulate the opioid industry? Beside, the majority isn't necessarily in the right either. That's why no matter what you and society need to process the fact that you have broken the law; note that I'm using the abstract term process, which
djsumdog 8y ago
> However, they still legally hold the rights to what they have, and thus releasing their content in public is still illegal. You'd have to get the original authors to legally release it elsewhere, which they might not even have the rights to. Most scientists still hold the rights to their articles. You can often e-mail a professor if you need additional information, artifacts or code for reproducibility. Yes, it's hard to get professors to e-mail you back a lot of the times, but when they do, they are often open to giving you copied of their papers and underlying research data. Most journals don't put any restrictions on them for doing so. In one of my publications, I had to pay an additional $150 just for that article to be open access (and that was over a decade ago. I'm sure it's gone up).
- arghwhat 8y ago
  In that case, all it takes is the cooperation of the authors to publish their content elsewhere. The question is whether the professors are only okay providing it to you, or if they're okay with it being made openly available. If they retain the rights, it should be fine for it to be published in parallel elsewhere. I was a bit careful about stating that its all on the authors, as it is entirely legal for the author to give up their rights to a work (and I wouldn't have been surprised if the journals did that to avoid risk of lost revenue), in which case the hands of the authors' would be bound.
c22 8y ago
But the content they have represents a significant slice of humanity's knowledge that we have all worked hard and paid for. So if we allow these giants to wither and die but we don't rescue this content (currently possible only via illegal means) then don't we risk losing access to it entirely? To me, a moral action is one which confers the greatest benefit to humanity, so from this view these scurrilous science pirates may be legally wrong, but morally correct.
- arghwhat 8y ago
  Then the proper action is to ensure that such moral acts are not heroic-but-illegal feats, but to ensure that our legal systems supports what we all agree is the proper way forward. However, do note that from the outside, there's nothing wrong with the ability to create their model. I like that freedom. What is wrong is that we're all feeding it, sponsoring it with government money, and indeed putting what should be our shared knowledge into a private archive. This is why I believe that the proper way forward is to simply not use them, while allowing their existence. Only if they somehow force their use, or disallow/inconvenience authors' attempts to release their content elsewhere should we take legal action in the form of writing laws against it.

enriquto 8y ago

> gives them a chance to cry "Foul!". Do not give them that chance. They can cry whatever they want. I want them to disappear in great pain!

arghwhat 8y ago
Then don't give them the legal weaponry to fight back.
- smsm42 8y ago
  They already have the weaponry. They have captured the content people need to advance science and learning. That's already lost, we can't re-fight that battle. The choice now is to either use SciHub to access that content by other means, or voluntarily avoid doing this - thus granting them the spoils of the victory, and hope to maybe, maybe have some content free in the next one. I don't see how not voluntarily granting them the spoils makes anything worse for me - the legal system is always on their site, and that won't change in my lifetime. So it's either no access to papers for me, and hoping that maybe my grandkids will have some - or SciHub.

leereeves 8y ago

> the content which they legally yet immorally sell The real foul is when the government enforces immoral laws.

class4behavior 8y ago
If you allow illegal activity as a form of protest—when it is not the absolutely last option—, then you negate the legitimacy of the law in general. So even if you argue your illegal action was the best possible measure to move society forward, you still have to accept the consequences for breaking the law. In this case it is the presence of a legal device allowing to censor copyright-infringing sources which is bad; that is, censorship is not even limited to (very) serious crimes anymore. As a result the government is building the legal and physical infrastructure to manipulate communication via the internet. This will only embolden more authoritarian regimes in their pursuit to isolate and nationalize their internet infrastructure.
- stale2002 8y ago
  The best way to get a law changed is for everyone to be breaking it all of the time. Laws only works because everyone follows it most of the time. If everyone is breaking a law, the government can't punish everyone, and eventually people start to wonder why it is a law in the first place. We've seen this happen with other laws in the past, quite often. Pot legalization comes to mind.
  - class4behavior 8y ago
    Everyone is the magic word here. Reality isn't that trivial unfortunately and we aren't talking about instances where this approach worked, but whether this kind of approach is justifiable as a general procedure. While pot legalization is going well, there's also an opioid crisis. Does that mean we should further deregulate the opioid industry? Beside, the majority isn't necessarily in the right either. That's why no matter what you and society need to process the fact that you have broken the law; note that I'm using the abstract term process, which

djsumdog 8y ago

> However, they still legally hold the rights to what they have, and thus releasing their content in public is still illegal. You'd have to get the original authors to legally release it elsewhere, which they might not even have the rights to. Most scientists still hold the rights to their articles. You can often e-mail a professor if you need additional information, artifacts or code for reproducibility. Yes, it's hard to get professors to e-mail you back a lot of the times, but when they do, they are often open to giving you copied of their papers and underlying research data. Most journals don't put any restrictions on them for doing so. In one of my publications, I had to pay an additional $150 just for that article to be open access (and that was over a decade ago. I'm sure it's gone up).

arghwhat 8y ago
In that case, all it takes is the cooperation of the authors to publish their content elsewhere. The question is whether the professors are only okay providing it to you, or if they're okay with it being made openly available. If they retain the rights, it should be fine for it to be published in parallel elsewhere. I was a bit careful about stating that its all on the authors, as it is entirely legal for the author to give up their rights to a work (and I wouldn't have been surprised if the journals did that to avoid risk of lost revenue), in which case the hands of the authors' would be bound.

c22 8y ago

But the content they have represents a significant slice of humanity's knowledge that we have all worked hard and paid for. So if we allow these giants to wither and die but we don't rescue this content (currently possible only via illegal means) then don't we risk losing access to it entirely? To me, a moral action is one which confers the greatest benefit to humanity, so from this view these scurrilous science pirates may be legally wrong, but morally correct.

arghwhat 8y ago
Then the proper action is to ensure that such moral acts are not heroic-but-illegal feats, but to ensure that our legal systems supports what we all agree is the proper way forward. However, do note that from the outside, there's nothing wrong with the ability to create their model. I like that freedom. What is wrong is that we're all feeding it, sponsoring it with government money, and indeed putting what should be our shared knowledge into a private archive. This is why I believe that the proper way forward is to simply not use them, while allowing their existence. Only if they somehow force their use, or disallow/inconvenience authors' attempts to release their content elsewhere should we take legal action in the form of writing laws against it.