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Here's a suggestion: exclude scientific articles from copyright restrictions. Your proposal is unconstitutional. "Takings" must be compensated or you run into

Here's a suggestion: exclude scientific articles from copyright restrictions. Your proposal is unconstitutional. "Takings" must be compensated or you run into 5th amendment issues. If you want a compromise, how about this: exclude those articles for which the research was paid for with tax dollars from copyright. At my school, I owned the copyright to anything I published unless I used school resources. Even if I published while being funded by an DARPA grant. Moreover, school funding was split evenly between tuition, federal government grants, and private grants. How can you justify forcing people to give up copyright when the public only paid for one third of the research? They become the targets of congressional investigations But that doesn't change the law. In fact, none of the proposals we've seen in response to Swartz's suicide involve copyright changes. Copyright law isn't going to change at all.

betterunix 14y ago
"Your proposal is unconstitutional. "Takings" must be compensated or you run into 5th amendment issues." Copyrights can only be granted for a limited time according to the constitution. The fifth amendment only applies to property and despite the use of the term "intellectual property" by lawyers and those who profit from copyrights, copyright is not actually a form of property. What is unconstitutional is copyrights that last forever, which is why Congress periodically extends copyright terms as an end-run around the constitution. "How can you justify forcing people to give up copyright when the public only paid for one third of the research?" Simple: the entire point of copyright is to ensure that American society will have access to creative work. It is not meant to be a form of property, it was never meant as a form of property, and researchers' copyrights on their work are doing nothing to ensure public access to those works. Further, it is not at all out of line for researchers to give up their copyrights. I cannot speak for your field, but in my field, we routinely assign copyrights to journals and give up any copyright claims thereafter. The entire point of publishing researcher is for other people to read it, cite it, and build on it. Researchers gain nothing by restricting access to their published work, and researchers benefit from their work being made more widely available. Don't swallow the propaganda that the copyright lobby has been shoving down our throats. Copyright is not about ensuring that authors can control who reads their work or how many copies exist in the world. Copyright is about monetizing the production and distribution of creative work. In the case of research, copyright has nothing to do with monetizing the work, because it is paid for regardless of copyright, and so the only point of copyrights on published research is to monetize the publishing system. We forgot the point of copyright long ago, thanks to decades of lobbying effort by the people who profit from the copyright system. Why are you publishing your research, exactly? Is it not so that other people can read it, and if that is the reason, why would you care about receiving copyrights on that work? I cannot speak for you, but when I publish my work, I do so with the intention of other people reading it -- something that copyright does nothing to encourage these days.
erichocean 14y ago
"Takings" must be compensated or you run into 5th amendment issues. Two words: civil forfeiture Running into constitutional issues isn't even a speed bump to the government at this point. That ship sailed long ago.

betterunix 14y ago

"Your proposal is unconstitutional. "Takings" must be compensated or you run into 5th amendment issues." Copyrights can only be granted for a limited time according to the constitution. The fifth amendment only applies to property and despite the use of the term "intellectual property" by lawyers and those who profit from copyrights, copyright is not actually a form of property. What is unconstitutional is copyrights that last forever, which is why Congress periodically extends copyright terms as an end-run around the constitution. "How can you justify forcing people to give up copyright when the public only paid for one third of the research?" Simple: the entire point of copyright is to ensure that American society will have access to creative work. It is not meant to be a form of property, it was never meant as a form of property, and researchers' copyrights on their work are doing nothing to ensure public access to those works. Further, it is not at all out of line for researchers to give up their copyrights. I cannot speak for your field, but in my field, we routinely assign copyrights to journals and give up any copyright claims thereafter. The entire point of publishing researcher is for other people to read it, cite it, and build on it. Researchers gain nothing by restricting access to their published work, and researchers benefit from their work being made more widely available. Don't swallow the propaganda that the copyright lobby has been shoving down our throats. Copyright is not about ensuring that authors can control who reads their work or how many copies exist in the world. Copyright is about monetizing the production and distribution of creative work. In the case of research, copyright has nothing to do with monetizing the work, because it is paid for regardless of copyright, and so the only point of copyrights on published research is to monetize the publishing system. We forgot the point of copyright long ago, thanks to decades of lobbying effort by the people who profit from the copyright system. Why are you publishing your research, exactly? Is it not so that other people can read it, and if that is the reason, why would you care about receiving copyrights on that work? I cannot speak for you, but when I publish my work, I do so with the intention of other people reading it -- something that copyright does nothing to encourage these days.

erichocean 14y ago

"Takings" must be compensated or you run into 5th amendment issues. Two words: civil forfeiture Running into constitutional issues isn't even a speed bump to the government at this point. That ship sailed long ago.