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Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more o

by fjabre 6y ago

Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more open. The science should be funded and free. The applications of the science are where the money is to be made. These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. It's time for them to fail and die off naturally. But it will probably take legislation to do so. And I for one can't wait to see them gone.

chalst 6y ago
Biden has been very comfy as a senator with the expansive IP claims made by Hollywood. I think he is going to be something of a disappointment to you.
- fjabre 6y ago
  That's unfortunate. Good thing he's really old with not much time left. Not that I wish him harm. He's certainly better than a lot of alternatives.
mywittyname 6y ago
> These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. Elsevier is a very diverse company with a lot of product offerings that are not antiquated. People here tend to just think of them as a journal publication company, but they are much more than that. The company sells (through subsidiaries) a lot of IT products to governments and law enforcement around the world. They, as a small example, offer a service that allow LEO to perform comprehensive background & arrest record checks on individuals in custody.
- fjabre 6y ago
  Then Elsevier should be just fine when it loses this part of its business.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    "That part of the business" is still a huge portfolio of product offerings in-and-around the scientific publishing space. If you cut one head of the hydra, another will just grow back in its place. The company came to be so dominant because their strategy of vertical integration is effective and repeatable. Identify a market of valuable information; build tools to collect & collate that information; build tools for searching through the information; build tools for adding annotations or otherwise improving the value of the information; build tools to enable people to provide information directly through the platform. They've basically repeated this pattern for science, medicine, legal, and insurance industries. So much so that it's really impossible to pry them out of a space because they get so tightly integrated that they actually become indistinguishable from the market. I'm not favoring reed elsevier here, just pointing out that their dominance is very well established and isn't going to be easy to bring them down.
    - fjabre 6y ago
      Excellent breakdown. Thank you. Yes as I've said only legislation will end this tyranny. To guard this data to the point they were willing to throw Aaron Swartz in jail for 35 years is beyond reprehensible. It's simply abhorrent the way they have acted as gatekeepers to this kind of knowledge. They are responsible for slowing things down. Not speeding them up. These gatekeepers are holding us back. Lives could be saved. Millions of them. This data is a benefit to humanity as a whole and it should be treated as such.
no-s 6y ago
>>Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more open. "Yeah, meet the new boss, same as the old boss..." You write like someone who's never heard of "regulatory capture."
- fjabre 6y ago
  You write like someone who's a cynic.
  - no-s 6y ago
    >>You write like someone who's a cynic. Guilty but history is on my side.
freeone3000 6y ago
Democrats are politicians with listed policies, not faeries that grant wishes because you happen to be more aligned with them. Elimination of copyright isn't on their to-do list.
- fjabre 6y ago
  Who said anything about elimination of copyright? Who said I was more aligned with 'them' ? Most scientific research is funded with grants and by universities with billion dollar endowments. They are not struggling. You should not make money on the deaths of others because you think it's more important to charge for the knowledge that can save them. I'm in medical. Some of these papers are life saving. Please don't discount how valuable that science is to humanity as a whole. This is not about companies making profit. This is about science and the freedom of information. Data wants to be free and it should be.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    "Data wants to be free and should be" has been the rallying cry of software pirates since I've been in high school. It might have struck a nerve in a group of people who make money off of the sale of software. I'm not discounting how valuable open research is to society as a whole. I'm not even arguing that, as a moral right, the research should be freely available! I'm just not seeing a technical path there that doesn't retroactively unassign publishing rights to all past papers. And I don't see how a change in political administration makes it any easier to convince rich people to give up money. I'm not even convinced the government should take action here - CS work is done on arxiv, so it's not even as if Elsevier provides a useful service in distribution. Why are authors continuing to publish in Nature when they could put a PDF up anywhere? that's what we need to address.
ketzu 6y ago
> These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. I personally believe this is wishful thinking (similarly when I read about how companies have "outdated business models"). Publishers sell prestigue and attention, and this can't easily be replicated, nor is it unnecessary. The increase in research papers makes them even more valueable in my eyes. This is despite me wanting to see many changes to publishing and science distribution. edit: removed part that I deemed unecessarily hostile.
- fjabre 6y ago
  I think data wants to be free. Charge for the applications not the data. Data should be free. This saves lives. I think we can all agree there are certain things that are a benefit to humanity and we should place these things over profits. These companies are less valuable than they appear IMHO. These gatekeepers of knowledge. More like stonewallers.
whimsicalism 6y ago
> Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. There's optimism, and then there is naiveté.
- fjabre 6y ago
  Yes there's also people who think they always know better.
dmingod666 6y ago
Like how the opioid crisis was handled.. democrats and Republicans are exactly the same thing. American politics is WWE with old people in formal clothes..
- fjabre 6y ago
  I couldn't agree more. However there are voices at the fringes getting much much louder on both sides who are definitely not the same thing.
shakow 6y ago
> Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more open. Sci-hub was created under Obama, I don't remember neither him nor the party making anything to help them, quite the opposite actually: Elbakyan has been judged in absentia and sentenced twice under his presidency. Were she to put the foot on Western soil, she would pay it dearly thanks to this.
- fjabre 6y ago
  Obama failed in this regard. But Obama does not represent all dems. Nor does Obama represent Dems in 2021.
  - shakow 6y ago
    There are no precedents in the Democrats history of exercise of power that would let us hope that Obamas's VP would lead a radically different policy.
- alacombe 6y ago
  The Obama AG killed Aaron Swartz.
zozbot234 6y ago
The Democrats are on Big Media's side even more so than the Republicans. Hoping that they're going to switch sides and "punish" big copyright and Media owners for their IP trolling and abuse is just wishful thinking.
- fjabre 6y ago
  Not all dems. We all know what we got with the Republicans last 4 years. Let's see what changed on the other side of the aisle if anything.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > Not all dems. I know that we're not supposed to be snarky here at HN, but I'm failing to see how #NotAllDems is a sensible argument. Especially given President-Elect Biden's track record on this particular issue, and Vice-President-Elect Harris' history as a "hardline", "tough on crime" prosecutor.

by fjabre 6y ago

chalst 6y ago

Biden has been very comfy as a senator with the expansive IP claims made by Hollywood. I think he is going to be something of a disappointment to you.

fjabre 6y ago
That's unfortunate. Good thing he's really old with not much time left. Not that I wish him harm. He's certainly better than a lot of alternatives.

mywittyname 6y ago

> These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. Elsevier is a very diverse company with a lot of product offerings that are not antiquated. People here tend to just think of them as a journal publication company, but they are much more than that. The company sells (through subsidiaries) a lot of IT products to governments and law enforcement around the world. They, as a small example, offer a service that allow LEO to perform comprehensive background & arrest record checks on individuals in custody.

fjabre 6y ago
Then Elsevier should be just fine when it loses this part of its business.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  "That part of the business" is still a huge portfolio of product offerings in-and-around the scientific publishing space. If you cut one head of the hydra, another will just grow back in its place. The company came to be so dominant because their strategy of vertical integration is effective and repeatable. Identify a market of valuable information; build tools to collect & collate that information; build tools for searching through the information; build tools for adding annotations or otherwise improving the value of the information; build tools to enable people to provide information directly through the platform. They've basically repeated this pattern for science, medicine, legal, and insurance industries. So much so that it's really impossible to pry them out of a space because they get so tightly integrated that they actually become indistinguishable from the market. I'm not favoring reed elsevier here, just pointing out that their dominance is very well established and isn't going to be easy to bring them down.
  - fjabre 6y ago
    Excellent breakdown. Thank you. Yes as I've said only legislation will end this tyranny. To guard this data to the point they were willing to throw Aaron Swartz in jail for 35 years is beyond reprehensible. It's simply abhorrent the way they have acted as gatekeepers to this kind of knowledge. They are responsible for slowing things down. Not speeding them up. These gatekeepers are holding us back. Lives could be saved. Millions of them. This data is a benefit to humanity as a whole and it should be treated as such.

no-s 6y ago

>>Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more open. "Yeah, meet the new boss, same as the old boss..." You write like someone who's never heard of "regulatory capture."

fjabre 6y ago
You write like someone who's a cynic.
- no-s 6y ago
  >>You write like someone who's a cynic. Guilty but history is on my side.

freeone3000 6y ago

Democrats are politicians with listed policies, not faeries that grant wishes because you happen to be more aligned with them. Elimination of copyright isn't on their to-do list.

fjabre 6y ago
Who said anything about elimination of copyright? Who said I was more aligned with 'them' ? Most scientific research is funded with grants and by universities with billion dollar endowments. They are not struggling. You should not make money on the deaths of others because you think it's more important to charge for the knowledge that can save them. I'm in medical. Some of these papers are life saving. Please don't discount how valuable that science is to humanity as a whole. This is not about companies making profit. This is about science and the freedom of information. Data wants to be free and it should be.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  "Data wants to be free and should be" has been the rallying cry of software pirates since I've been in high school. It might have struck a nerve in a group of people who make money off of the sale of software. I'm not discounting how valuable open research is to society as a whole. I'm not even arguing that, as a moral right, the research should be freely available! I'm just not seeing a technical path there that doesn't retroactively unassign publishing rights to all past papers. And I don't see how a change in political administration makes it any easier to convince rich people to give up money. I'm not even convinced the government should take action here - CS work is done on arxiv, so it's not even as if Elsevier provides a useful service in distribution. Why are authors continuing to publish in Nature when they could put a PDF up anywhere? that's what we need to address.

ketzu 6y ago

> These companies are unnecessary dinosaurs from a bygone era. I personally believe this is wishful thinking (similarly when I read about how companies have "outdated business models"). Publishers sell prestigue and attention, and this can't easily be replicated, nor is it unnecessary. The increase in research papers makes them even more valueable in my eyes. This is despite me wanting to see many changes to publishing and science distribution. edit: removed part that I deemed unecessarily hostile.

fjabre 6y ago
I think data wants to be free. Charge for the applications not the data. Data should be free. This saves lives. I think we can all agree there are certain things that are a benefit to humanity and we should place these things over profits. These companies are less valuable than they appear IMHO. These gatekeepers of knowledge. More like stonewallers.

whimsicalism 6y ago

> Hopefully with Dems in control we will see these companies punished for their bad behavior. There's optimism, and then there is naiveté.

fjabre 6y ago
Yes there's also people who think they always know better.

dmingod666 6y ago

Like how the opioid crisis was handled.. democrats and Republicans are exactly the same thing. American politics is WWE with old people in formal clothes..

fjabre 6y ago
I couldn't agree more. However there are voices at the fringes getting much much louder on both sides who are definitely not the same thing.

shakow 6y ago

> Or at least laws passed that make the publication of research more open. Sci-hub was created under Obama, I don't remember neither him nor the party making anything to help them, quite the opposite actually: Elbakyan has been judged in absentia and sentenced twice under his presidency. Were she to put the foot on Western soil, she would pay it dearly thanks to this.

fjabre 6y ago
Obama failed in this regard. But Obama does not represent all dems. Nor does Obama represent Dems in 2021.
- shakow 6y ago
  There are no precedents in the Democrats history of exercise of power that would let us hope that Obamas's VP would lead a radically different policy.
alacombe 6y ago
The Obama AG killed Aaron Swartz.

zozbot234 6y ago

The Democrats are on Big Media's side even more so than the Republicans. Hoping that they're going to switch sides and "punish" big copyright and Media owners for their IP trolling and abuse is just wishful thinking.

fjabre 6y ago
Not all dems. We all know what we got with the Republicans last 4 years. Let's see what changed on the other side of the aisle if anything.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > Not all dems. I know that we're not supposed to be snarky here at HN, but I'm failing to see how #NotAllDems is a sensible argument. Especially given President-Elect Biden's track record on this particular issue, and Vice-President-Elect Harris' history as a "hardline", "tough on crime" prosecutor.