5 ms·

This is terrible news, but, not knowing much about the case, how was it morally right to download a bunch of pay-for documents?

by tesmar2 14y ago

polarix 14y ago
This is the sum total of human academic knowledge. It must be freed. The first tragic thing was that he failed to torrent it immediately. Now this. A great loss.
- n09n 14y ago
  >It must be freed. That doesn't follow.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    That depends on your philosophy about knowledge. If you believe that the ability to communicate our knowledge to each other and to future generations is our most important advantage, then anything that makes it easier to access knowledge is a good thing. If instead you believe that individuals should profit from their knowledge, Swartz is just as bad as JSTOR and our government is corrupt for not prosecuting the lot of them (most of the people whose articles were downloaded were probably paid nothing for their writing). Or, maybe you believe that corporations are our saviors and therefore anything that goes against their interests is a bad thing. In which case the government is doing exactly what it should be doing.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
betterunix 14y ago
Anyone with access to a university network has access to those documents. I have access to JSTOR also. What moral issue can you possibly raise with someone using their access to download these documents? It's OK to download 10, but not 1000000? Do you have a moral issue with automated downloads -- and if so, how can you justify JSTOR itself? It is worth noting that JSTOR did not want to press charges in this case. After contacting Swartz, they were satisfied that he was not going to share the documents with others (and they "recovered" them, whatever that means), and that would have been that. The government decided to prosecute, probably to show how serious they are about restricting access to human knowledge (or whatever it is that they thought this prosecution would accomplish).
- tesmar2 14y ago
  > Anyone with access to a university network has access to those documents The JSTOR site says "Libraries and organizations license full-text content for their patrons, and if you are affiliated with one of these institutions, you can access those complete articles." Their site seems to say anyone with a uni affiliation.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    Or anyone who is a patron of a university library system, which in this day and age means anyone who has been given access to a university network. Where I am, anyone can get one-week access if someone who is affiliated signs in and generates a unique token for the guest; we frequently do this when researchers from other schools or companies visit my group, but there is no actual restriction on who can be given access. Most universities have a system for allowing members of the public to access their library system, and by extension, JSTOR. Really, it is not much different from walking into a university library and reading the books there. Most of the schools I see allow anyone to walk into their library, without having to prove they have any sort of affiliation. It is as though universities believe their purpose is to spread knowledge or something crazy like that...
    - kanzure 14y ago
      > Or anyone who is a patron of a university library system, > which in this day and age means anyone who has been given > access to a university network. Not everyone is in a university, in fact there are billions of people who aren't in school and who would absolutely benefit from having access to the scientific knowledge contained in these tax-payer-funded documents. The current majority of people who read papers are, of course, going to be in colleges because they are the ones who have access in the first place. I challenge you (in a very light-hearted, positive way) to demonstrate how to access papers as a member of the public. Most universities seem to require you to show up in person to use the library computers. You can subscribe to classes and get a student id to access literature, but then you no longer count as the public, do you? Also, DeepDyve and ReadCube are scams. Anyone who reads a healthy amount gets charged out the wazoo. I didn't even know I had a wazoo!
chimeracoder 14y ago
Someone on Reddit explained this better than I can, but JSTOR is basically a scam. It pockets the money that it receives and doesn't pay anything back to the authors. As an author, you yourself have to pay for access to your own work (or your university does, via a subscription). JSTOR has scholarly articles dating back centuries - when you consider that that information deserves to be free, and the societal cost of keeping that information and research hidden, JSTOR's mere existence is practically a crime. CERN has been very clear in their opposition to JSTOR's practices, from what I know.
- sciurus 14y ago
  In the copyright wars, JSTOR is hardly a bad actor compared to the publishers. It's a nonprofit formed by libraries so that there would be a single entity to negotiate with publishers and digitize journals. I'm not saying they've always moved as quickly and aggressively as I'd like, but calling their existence "practically a crime" strikes me as very wrong. If they didn't exist, most libraries wouldn't have access to the journals JSTOR archives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR
  - TinyZorro 14y ago
    >If they didn't exist, most libraries wouldn't have access to the journals JSTOR archives. This isn't true. Something else would be in its place. The only question is whether it would be better. I believe that society has already paid a number of times for the benefit of most of the knowledge in this archive. This should be freely available to anyone with access to the internet.
- fotoblur 14y ago
  I don't know much about this system JSTOR, but you know with what you said about "scholarly articles dating back centuries" I'd expect them to have some costs associated with those efforts. Its not a popular way to raise money, yes, but who else are you going to charge other than the people interested in using that system...just saying.
- rprasad 14y ago
cabalamat 14y ago
All academic journals where the underlying research was paid for by the state should be available to any taxpayer without cost -- which for all practical purposes means any person without cost -- because they have already paid for them. Paywalled journals are a form of rent-seeking which while arguably an acceptable evil in the days of print are an unacceptable evil today.
konstruktor 14y ago
Because most academic research is at least partly funded by taxpayers (even more so everywhere but in the US), and scientists pay submission fees (again, with taxpayer money) to cover what the journals consider their contribution to the process. For some more information about the business practices of this industry, this is a nice, short text: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-publishing-monopoly-challenged http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-pu...
- tesmar2 14y ago
  Man, it's just really too bad he took his own life. Man. That being said, I would advocate working through the legal system to effect change in this unjust area, not break it. Do you know of anyone working through the legal system to effect such change?
lucian303 14y ago
Copyright law is extremely broken, even in the case of academic papers and traditional books / writings. Morality has nothing to do with law, which defines what must or must not be paid for. If it did, we'd still be stoning each other to death over a chicken.

This is terrible news, but, not knowing much about the case, how was it morally right to download a bunch of pay-for documents?

by tesmar2 14y ago

This is terrible news, but, not knowing much about the case, how was it morally right to download a bunch of pay-for documents?

polarix 14y ago

This is the sum total of human academic knowledge. It must be freed. The first tragic thing was that he failed to torrent it immediately. Now this. A great loss.

n09n 14y ago
>It must be freed. That doesn't follow.
- betterunix 14y ago
  That depends on your philosophy about knowledge. If you believe that the ability to communicate our knowledge to each other and to future generations is our most important advantage, then anything that makes it easier to access knowledge is a good thing. If instead you believe that individuals should profit from their knowledge, Swartz is just as bad as JSTOR and our government is corrupt for not prosecuting the lot of them (most of the people whose articles were downloaded were probably paid nothing for their writing). Or, maybe you believe that corporations are our saviors and therefore anything that goes against their interests is a bad thing. In which case the government is doing exactly what it should be doing.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

betterunix 14y ago

Anyone with access to a university network has access to those documents. I have access to JSTOR also. What moral issue can you possibly raise with someone using their access to download these documents? It's OK to download 10, but not 1000000? Do you have a moral issue with automated downloads -- and if so, how can you justify JSTOR itself? It is worth noting that JSTOR did not want to press charges in this case. After contacting Swartz, they were satisfied that he was not going to share the documents with others (and they "recovered" them, whatever that means), and that would have been that. The government decided to prosecute, probably to show how serious they are about restricting access to human knowledge (or whatever it is that they thought this prosecution would accomplish).

tesmar2 14y ago
> Anyone with access to a university network has access to those documents The JSTOR site says "Libraries and organizations license full-text content for their patrons, and if you are affiliated with one of these institutions, you can access those complete articles." Their site seems to say anyone with a uni affiliation.
- betterunix 14y ago
  Or anyone who is a patron of a university library system, which in this day and age means anyone who has been given access to a university network. Where I am, anyone can get one-week access if someone who is affiliated signs in and generates a unique token for the guest; we frequently do this when researchers from other schools or companies visit my group, but there is no actual restriction on who can be given access. Most universities have a system for allowing members of the public to access their library system, and by extension, JSTOR. Really, it is not much different from walking into a university library and reading the books there. Most of the schools I see allow anyone to walk into their library, without having to prove they have any sort of affiliation. It is as though universities believe their purpose is to spread knowledge or something crazy like that...
  - kanzure 14y ago
    > Or anyone who is a patron of a university library system, > which in this day and age means anyone who has been given > access to a university network. Not everyone is in a university, in fact there are billions of people who aren't in school and who would absolutely benefit from having access to the scientific knowledge contained in these tax-payer-funded documents. The current majority of people who read papers are, of course, going to be in colleges because they are the ones who have access in the first place. I challenge you (in a very light-hearted, positive way) to demonstrate how to access papers as a member of the public. Most universities seem to require you to show up in person to use the library computers. You can subscribe to classes and get a student id to access literature, but then you no longer count as the public, do you? Also, DeepDyve and ReadCube are scams. Anyone who reads a healthy amount gets charged out the wazoo. I didn't even know I had a wazoo!

chimeracoder 14y ago

Someone on Reddit explained this better than I can, but JSTOR is basically a scam. It pockets the money that it receives and doesn't pay anything back to the authors. As an author, you yourself have to pay for access to your own work (or your university does, via a subscription). JSTOR has scholarly articles dating back centuries - when you consider that that information deserves to be free, and the societal cost of keeping that information and research hidden, JSTOR's mere existence is practically a crime. CERN has been very clear in their opposition to JSTOR's practices, from what I know.

sciurus 14y ago
In the copyright wars, JSTOR is hardly a bad actor compared to the publishers. It's a nonprofit formed by libraries so that there would be a single entity to negotiate with publishers and digitize journals. I'm not saying they've always moved as quickly and aggressively as I'd like, but calling their existence "practically a crime" strikes me as very wrong. If they didn't exist, most libraries wouldn't have access to the journals JSTOR archives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR
- TinyZorro 14y ago
  >If they didn't exist, most libraries wouldn't have access to the journals JSTOR archives. This isn't true. Something else would be in its place. The only question is whether it would be better. I believe that society has already paid a number of times for the benefit of most of the knowledge in this archive. This should be freely available to anyone with access to the internet.
fotoblur 14y ago
I don't know much about this system JSTOR, but you know with what you said about "scholarly articles dating back centuries" I'd expect them to have some costs associated with those efforts. Its not a popular way to raise money, yes, but who else are you going to charge other than the people interested in using that system...just saying.
rprasad 14y ago

cabalamat 14y ago

All academic journals where the underlying research was paid for by the state should be available to any taxpayer without cost -- which for all practical purposes means any person without cost -- because they have already paid for them. Paywalled journals are a form of rent-seeking which while arguably an acceptable evil in the days of print are an unacceptable evil today.

konstruktor 14y ago

Because most academic research is at least partly funded by taxpayers (even more so everywhere but in the US), and scientists pay submission fees (again, with taxpayer money) to cover what the journals consider their contribution to the process. For some more information about the business practices of this industry, this is a nice, short text: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-publishing-monopoly-challenged http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-pu...

tesmar2 14y ago
Man, it's just really too bad he took his own life. Man. That being said, I would advocate working through the legal system to effect change in this unjust area, not break it. Do you know of anyone working through the legal system to effect such change?

lucian303 14y ago

Copyright law is extremely broken, even in the case of academic papers and traditional books / writings. Morality has nothing to do with law, which defines what must or must not be paid for. If it did, we'd still be stoning each other to death over a chicken.