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No, it's not a human right. I think the only argument you need here is that tax payer funded research needs to be publicly available. If someone wants to do p
by keithnz 3y ago
No, it's not a human right. I think the only argument you need here is that tax payer funded research needs to be publicly available.
If someone wants to do private research and sell the results to people via journals, then they should be free to do so.
- elashri 3y agoMost of published research in the world is mainly funded by taxes (or public funds in general). Most of the private research efforts is R&D work that will not get published. Yes some private funded research will get published (i.e Google research) but this is not the rule. So I would not focus on the edge cases.
- gretch 3y agoI think knowledge is a human right. Free people are able to go outside and start dropping rocks from different heights to start deriving physics. Or study wildlife for biology knowledge. That's not what this article is talking about though. This article is attempting to conflate the right to knowledge with a right to access publications that another party produced and put behind a pay wall. Which is also different than the 3rd discussion of "if it is tax funded, shouldn't it be available to the general public?".
- jrflowers 3y ago> Free people are able to go outside and start dropping rocks from different heights to start deriving physics. Or study wildlife for biology knowledge. Thank you for clarifying this. I could see how a reasonable person could easily assume that Elbakyan is in fact talking about the prohibition of dropping rocks without going through an elaborate bit of mental gymnastics for a pedantic language gotcha in order to arrive at such an interpretation.
- gretch 3y agoI don't know if you're trying to be sarcastic or what, but it's as worth enshrining as the "freedom of speech". You could easily say "lol what, yOu'RE NoT aLLoWed to Talk?", but what it actually means is that the government can't persecute you based on what you say. You should note that many authorities and governments in the past have absolutely punished the gathering of scientific knowledge, e.g. in a theology.
- jrflowers 3y ago> You could easily say "lol what, yOu'RE NoT aLLoWed to Talk?", but what it actually means is that the government can't persecute you based on what you say. This is a good point. A person can mention freedom of speech and another person can respond in intentional misunderstanding in order to make a joke or to seem intelligent. Like for example, someone can see an article written by the creator of Sci-Hub on a very specific topic and bring up rocks.
- gretch 3y agoYes well unfortunately that author decided to over generalize their own argument into “Access to knowledge is a human right.” That indeed is the “specific topic” isn’t it?
- jrflowers 3y agoThis is a good point. Enumerating “human rights” as a concept is very simple. Knowledge obviously is not one, and profit undebatably is one. I’m not sure why anyone would debate facts as universal as the weight of a proton.
- maven29 3y agoI don't think you realize that sale proceeds never reach authors or reviewers. Journals would look like tabloids if they did. Private corporations even pay for open access because the addressable market for such a product in dollars will be a pittance compared to whatever it cost them to research the product. Regardless, LLM training has a different notion about the public domain, so trade secrets are what you're looking for - licensing isn't going to stop anyone.