4 ms·

Agreed, to an extent, but that doesn't mean you can breach any barrier someone has in place preventing access, take it, and make it publicly available.

by hk1337 2mo ago

pdonis 2mo ago
The information Swartz was downloading was scientific papers that we, the public, have already paid for with our tax dollars. The crime here is that the government allows JSTOR and other private companies to still hold those papers behind paywalls instead of releasing them into the public domain as they should have been.
- s1artibartfast 2mo ago
  Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition.
  - pdonis 2mo ago
    > Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. So when your tax dollars pay for a scientist to do research, you don't think the papers that document that research should be public property? If scientists want to keep their research private, they should find private funding. Note that, as in my previous post, I said "should". If you mean there isn't explicit language to that effect in the grants, see further comments below. > The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Invalid comparison. The scientific papers in question are not the personal property of the scientists. > Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. IMO this should be the case, and it's an outrage that it's not, since it should be an obvious requirement for any research that our tax dollars pay for. > That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition. Maybe that wasn't written into the grants explicitly, but that just means our government is (once again) failing to act in our best interests.
    - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
      It seems like you are jumping between the reality you would like and the reality that exists. It is fine to want for something to be different, but that doesn't change the facts of how they are. It's fine to advocate future papers be made public. I think it is antisocial and delusional to say past papers belong to the public just because that's what you would have wanted. The word for this is expostfacto recontracting, and undermines just about any system of law where is used. Last, there are lots of reasons to pay for research even if it is not made public. Free public access is often the least of those concerns. Especially so when 99% of researchers whom might make meaningful use of the publication already have access through a journal system. To understand this better, consider private drug patents coming from Public Funding. The government might rightly calculate that it is in the public interest too help a for-profit company develop a cancer cure with grants, then have no cure at all.
      - pdonis 2mo ago
        > It seems like you are jumping between the reality you would like and the reality that exists. No, you did that, by responding to my post where I said "should" as though I were trying to describe how things are instead of how they ought to be. > I think it is antisocial and delusional to say past papers belong to the public just because that's what you would have wanted. I didn't say that. You need to work on your reading comprehension. > The word for this is expostfacto recontracting No, the word for what you're doing is putting words in my mouth and attacking a straw man. > there are lots of reasons to pay for research even if it is not made public. Can you give some? > Especially so when 99% of researchers whom might make meaningful use of the publication already have access through a journal system. Which they then have to pay fees to, using more of our tax dollars, because of the sweetheart deals the government has given the journals. Not only that, but researchers nowadays share copies of papers over the Internet routinely (for example, using sites like arxiv.org), so they don't even need journals to know what other researchers are doing. So even that rationale for paying the journals is now out of date. > consider private drug patents coming from Public Funding A patent requires revealing the information that the invention is based on, in exchange for the exclusive right to produce the item for some period of time. So I don't see how this is an argument for keeping publicly funded research behind a paywall.
  - silver_sun 2mo ago
    >The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. I think a better analogy for this situation is: The public donates food, then the recipient, after being fed, sells access to (infinite cheaply replicable copies of) said food for a profit. The public in this case just wants to have said food.
    - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
      Maybe we are better off avoiding the analogies. The public gives them cash for terms of a grant. If those dont include an open access paper, it is unreasonable to demand it after the fact. It certainly doesn't give a right to go take take their papers (or whatever they made).
      - silver_sun 1mo ago
        There's some common-sense understanding of this situation that I'm not sure you're wilfully overlooking or oblivious to. The claim is that it's unjust to blatantly exploit a system that was intended to fund/sustain you, for profit. It's not necessarily illegal behavior since "open access" was not in the terms, but how can it possibly be morally defensible that they have managed to find a way to legally subvert/trick the system for their own benefit? An overly pedantic view of the situation isn't helpful.
        s1artibartfast 1mo ago
        Its not subversion or a trick. It is reasonable and functioning as intended. There was no deception or trick. It was 100% up front and what those involved expected. There is no moral failing aside from those stealing and spreading outrage.
- tzs 2mo ago
  JSTOR didn't own the copyright to any of the material, so could only serve it under the license agreements it had. Nevertheless they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users. A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizing back issues of journals that the publishers probably would have never gotten around to.
  - pdonis 1mo ago
    > they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users. Sure, but that still only covers a miniscule fraction of US taxpayers. Plus, you have to walk in to the school, library, or other institution, instead of just being able to use your web browser at home. > A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizing back issues of journals that the publishers probably would have never gotten around to. This is a genuine value add, but it could have been paid for by the government directly without then having the material behind a paywall.
zymhan 2mo ago
Surely it depends on the specific information in question?

Agreed, to an extent, but that doesn't mean you can breach any barrier someone has in place preventing access, take it, and make it publicly available.

by hk1337 2mo ago

Agreed, to an extent, but that doesn't mean you can breach any barrier someone has in place preventing access, take it, and make it publicly available.

pdonis 2mo ago

The information Swartz was downloading was scientific papers that we, the public, have already paid for with our tax dollars. The crime here is that the government allows JSTOR and other private companies to still hold those papers behind paywalls instead of releasing them into the public domain as they should have been.

s1artibartfast 2mo ago
Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition.
- pdonis 2mo ago
  > Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. So when your tax dollars pay for a scientist to do research, you don't think the papers that document that research should be public property? If scientists want to keep their research private, they should find private funding. Note that, as in my previous post, I said "should". If you mean there isn't explicit language to that effect in the grants, see further comments below. > The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Invalid comparison. The scientific papers in question are not the personal property of the scientists. > Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. IMO this should be the case, and it's an outrage that it's not, since it should be an obvious requirement for any research that our tax dollars pay for. > That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition. Maybe that wasn't written into the grants explicitly, but that just means our government is (once again) failing to act in our best interests.
  - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
    It seems like you are jumping between the reality you would like and the reality that exists. It is fine to want for something to be different, but that doesn't change the facts of how they are. It's fine to advocate future papers be made public. I think it is antisocial and delusional to say past papers belong to the public just because that's what you would have wanted. The word for this is expostfacto recontracting, and undermines just about any system of law where is used. Last, there are lots of reasons to pay for research even if it is not made public. Free public access is often the least of those concerns. Especially so when 99% of researchers whom might make meaningful use of the publication already have access through a journal system. To understand this better, consider private drug patents coming from Public Funding. The government might rightly calculate that it is in the public interest too help a for-profit company develop a cancer cure with grants, then have no cure at all.
    - pdonis 2mo ago
      > It seems like you are jumping between the reality you would like and the reality that exists. No, you did that, by responding to my post where I said "should" as though I were trying to describe how things are instead of how they ought to be. > I think it is antisocial and delusional to say past papers belong to the public just because that's what you would have wanted. I didn't say that. You need to work on your reading comprehension. > The word for this is expostfacto recontracting No, the word for what you're doing is putting words in my mouth and attacking a straw man. > there are lots of reasons to pay for research even if it is not made public. Can you give some? > Especially so when 99% of researchers whom might make meaningful use of the publication already have access through a journal system. Which they then have to pay fees to, using more of our tax dollars, because of the sweetheart deals the government has given the journals. Not only that, but researchers nowadays share copies of papers over the Internet routinely (for example, using sites like arxiv.org), so they don't even need journals to know what other researchers are doing. So even that rationale for paying the journals is now out of date. > consider private drug patents coming from Public Funding A patent requires revealing the information that the invention is based on, in exchange for the exclusive right to produce the item for some period of time. So I don't see how this is an argument for keeping publicly funded research behind a paywall.
- silver_sun 2mo ago
  >The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. I think a better analogy for this situation is: The public donates food, then the recipient, after being fed, sells access to (infinite cheaply replicable copies of) said food for a profit. The public in this case just wants to have said food.
  - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
    Maybe we are better off avoiding the analogies. The public gives them cash for terms of a grant. If those dont include an open access paper, it is unreasonable to demand it after the fact. It certainly doesn't give a right to go take take their papers (or whatever they made).
    - silver_sun 1mo ago
      There's some common-sense understanding of this situation that I'm not sure you're wilfully overlooking or oblivious to. The claim is that it's unjust to blatantly exploit a system that was intended to fund/sustain you, for profit. It's not necessarily illegal behavior since "open access" was not in the terms, but how can it possibly be morally defensible that they have managed to find a way to legally subvert/trick the system for their own benefit? An overly pedantic view of the situation isn't helpful.
      - s1artibartfast 1mo ago
        Its not subversion or a trick. It is reasonable and functioning as intended. There was no deception or trick. It was 100% up front and what those involved expected. There is no moral failing aside from those stealing and spreading outrage.
tzs 2mo ago
JSTOR didn't own the copyright to any of the material, so could only serve it under the license agreements it had. Nevertheless they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users. A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizing back issues of journals that the publishers probably would have never gotten around to.
- pdonis 1mo ago
  > they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users. Sure, but that still only covers a miniscule fraction of US taxpayers. Plus, you have to walk in to the school, library, or other institution, instead of just being able to use your web browser at home. > A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizing back issues of journals that the publishers probably would have never gotten around to. This is a genuine value add, but it could have been paid for by the government directly without then having the material behind a paywall.

zymhan 2mo ago

Surely it depends on the specific information in question?