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We wish it didn't have to be that way. We wish that information, particular academic publications, could be share openly and legally. Now, it's 1855. You want
by josh_fyi 14y ago
We wish it didn't have to be that way. We wish that information, particular academic publications, could be share openly and legally.
Now, it's 1855. You want the slaves to be freed. By law. By right.
So, do you shut down the Underground Railroad?
- VMG 14y agobrb, torrenting Django. Where can I get my medal?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- oinksoft 14y agoComparing intellectual property law to chattel slavery is a bit tasteless, no?
- jlgreco 14y agoI don't think he is suggesting, explicitly nor implicitly, an equivalency in severity.
- igravious 14y agoHe's not suggesting equivalency but he did make a comparison, one which is a bit tasteless, is it not?
- jlgreco 14y agoNo, I don't think so. If we want to learn from history it is important that we allow ourselves to make comparisons to the past, even if the magnitude of severity is completely off. If we assume that we are progressing as time passes, then with any luck the severity in comparisons to the past should always be off. That should not phase us, but rather be seen as a sign of progress. Now, if the situation is a teenager calling his mother "literally Hitler" because he was given a bedtime, then Godwin's law is probably pretty applicable, but that is an incredibly extreme case. The topic here is civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws. One law happens to be much worse than other, but I simply cannot find the comparison itself to be tasteless or offensive. That period in our history teaches us a painful collective lesson about the ethics of civil disobedience, I would find it more offensive to ignore that lesson. Assertions of equivalency would be troubling, but I see none here.
- nitrogen 14y agoIdeally, as history and society progress, there will always be bigger evils in the past than the present. This is a sign of progress. In that light, comparing the evils of the present to the evils of the past is not so tasteless, because there aren't as many evils of the present on the same scale. Edit: I promise I wrote this without reading jlgreco's comment.
- rprasad 14y agoUnderground Railroad: people risking their lives to help slaves fleeing slavery, rape, beatings, murder, and the wholesale destruction of their families. Aaron Swartz: releasing academic articles that are already available for free or a low cost simply by visiting your local university and acquiring a guest access card. Not even remotely comparable.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Permit 14y agoEspecially considering JSTOR is a non-profit that has to employ many people with similar occupations to those of HN. They digitize documents that wouldn't have otherwise been available at all before. It's incredible how if they hadn't digitized the works, no one would be outraged. But when they ask for a fee to cover the costs of such things, everyone paints them as villains who try and lock information away from the masses.
- derekp7 14y agoIsn't Google digitizing all printed works they can get their hands on?
- sliverstorm 14y agoGoogle has ridiculous amounts of capitol. They aren't digitizing printed works out of some sort of sense of social service. Street View is much the same way. They aren't doing it to be nice, and they aren't giving you access for free out of the goodness of their hearts. Everything they do that isn't funded by ad revenue or working towards greater ad revenue is a speculative exploration into future markets that will one day be monetized, but is not currently by virtue of their tremendously deep pockets. I've been wondering recently- I think companies like Google have started warping expectations beyond the realistic, and I'm both curious and apprehensive where that will take us.
- Permit 14y ago