4 ms·

Should Copyright Be Abolished On Academic Work?

19 points by andreyf 17y ago

jrockway 17y ago
Let's get rid of patents first.
- Locke1689 17y ago
  Software patents I could see, but I find no compelling evidence to get rid of patents in general...
  - dantheman 17y ago
    Agreed, software patents need to go. I'd also throw in business method, and biological (dna) patents out too. If we step back and look at intellectual property, I think it can be safe to start arguing against all intellectual property other than trademarks.
    - pbhj 17y ago
      To play devil's advocate: Why should someone researching battery materials, testing various combinations for charge holding and minimal voltage fluctuation, etc., be rewarded with a patent when someone doing the same with DNA sequences for increase grain yields be prevented from getting a patent. What about a new type of phone closure mechanism. There are thousands of patent applications (or were in my day, though I never worked on this material) for phone flips and sliders. What about a qubit based factorisation circuit - and then how about the completely novel software required to pass instructions to that circuit. The hardware interface between qubit and IC, how about when it's done using FPGA (effectively software). How about software alterations that alter the battery use in a phone through microswitching that extends the battery life beyond the benefits of the new materials in my first example. Why rule out software that can have a greater hard physical effect and allow hardware that may not make as good an improvement. (note "technical effect" is a route to getting a software patent in Europe).
      - dantheman 17y ago
        I personally thing that government involvement in the market, granting monopolies is actually harmful and we should abolish all intellectual property. Now it is proper for the government to stop fraud so trademarks and plagiarism would still be valid government concerns, but deciding what deserves and does not deserve a monopoly would be out of its reach.
        blasdel 17y ago
        The problem is more that these days the patent publication is totally useless -- it doesn't describe anything useful for copying the 'invention', and is totally obvious to boot. The government is granting a not-so 'limited monopoly' for what is essentially a trade secret. If software patents required full disclosure of source code and schematics, they wouldn't be nearly as shitty.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    I am talking about the case where a company "sponsors" University research and then owns all rights to anything the research team creates (via patents). Get your own research team, that's not what the universities are for, especially ones my taxes pay for.
jacquesm 17y ago
If it is publicly funded definitely. Otherwise there might be restrictions (I'm not in favour of universities being in bed with companies but I understand there is a lot of money involved and that combined with the push for "applicable research" (in other words stuff that makes money) makes it harder for universities to resist such funding.
- wmf 17y ago
  How common is it for the funder and copyright holder to be the same? I do corporate research and the copyright on my papers ends up owned by ACM, IEEE, Usenix, etc.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Which is absolutely beyond the pale. Tax money I give to the government, they give it to the universities who then do research and I'm locked out of the results.
oldgregg 17y ago
Journals don't take up that much bandwidth-- someone just needs to get around to launching thepiratejournal.org.
- sethjohn 17y ago
  I thought through this with a friend a while ago. The problem isn't getting the bandwidth to upload the content, the problem is getting access to content in the first place. In order to download PDFs of these papers, you need to have a subscription through your school/institution. The publishers will notice very quickly if someone starts downloading an entire journal's worth of articles.
  - chris11 17y ago
    I think a lot of professors put up their papers on their own websites. But that would really be a pain getting the articles from different places.
lutorm 17y ago
I'm not entirely convinced of this. I totally believe in open access, but putting papers in the public domain would mean that people could lift content and pass it off as theirs, which I think should not be allowed. (It would still be unethical, of course, but I'm not sure that is a big deterrent for some individuals.) Maybe the standard should be to license papers under something like the Creative Commons Attribution license.
- wmf 17y ago
  Who has used copyright law to punish plagiarism? This "feature" isn't worth preserving if no one uses it.
  - pbhj 17y ago
    I use CC licenses, usually BY-NC-SA. I don't actively enforce it but I feel I have a right to be named and to have a cut of the money if others are making money directly from my work without otherwise requesting permission. Copyright enables this: I have the right to label the work as mine, I have the right to license it as I see fit. If you plagiarise my work (not worth it!) I don't have the funds to chase you, if I did I would and I feel the law should give me that option. If you credit me and share any derivative works then I'm happy for you to use it, unless you've maliciously amended it and are crediting me - then copyright gives me remedies. Copyright terms stink like pig shit. Copyright is not all bad.
- pbhj 17y ago
  At last someone else who realises that copyright is not just about financial considerations but includes the moral rights too. Without copyright licenses like GPL won't work as the license is no longer more liberal than the status quo but instead is attempting to add restrictions. Without copyright you have no right to be named as an author of a work; you have no way (outside libel law) to prevent a spiteful sod from modifying your work to discredit you. FWIW those who receive funding from taxation, IMO, should be required to release the results under a BY-SA style license.
justin_vanw 17y ago
So, you have a job where you are required to show up for 6-12 hours per week, 8 months per year. For this you are paid between $60k and $200k per year. As part of this job, you are expected to publish papers which document your original work for the benefit of mankind. Any professor who doesn't put any and all work they do while employed by a public university into the public domain (or the closest thing allowed by their university) is the lowest of the low. I can't describe how I feel about such a person without a very large amount of swearing. Suppose someone came to your house and tell you that they want to work on a way to make your electric bill go down, but unless you give them some money up front they won't have enough time to both hold down an outside job and work on your electric bill. Then, after a while, you ask them how it's going. They tell you that you can see the results of their work if you pay them $50. That is exactly what some people do, except they collect less money and collect it from way more people. Dirtbags.
- Locke1689 17y ago
  Yeah, FUCK professors! Just because they've spent an inordinate amount of time becoming experts in their field, including extensive vetting by their renowned colleagues, they just expect things like "jobs" or "credit." Who the fuck do they think they are?!
  - justin_vanw 17y ago
    What do you think about what I said though?
- scott_s 17y ago
  Most researchers make their work as publicly available as possible. It's in their benefit to do so: the onus is on them to convince their peers their work is good and significant. In order to do so, they want to make it as easy to find as possible. Also, your time breakdown of a professor's week is absurd. They're required to be in class for 6-12 hours per week, but every (good) hour of lecture requires about three hours of prep time. Grading work takes time. And their greatest time sink is research. A young professor trying to attain tenure is putting in 60-70 hour weeks, 12 months of the year. Research continues when classes aren't in session. You're getting upset over the actions of a person who doesn't exist.

19 points by andreyf 17y ago

jrockway 17y ago

Let's get rid of patents first.

Locke1689 17y ago
Software patents I could see, but I find no compelling evidence to get rid of patents in general...
- dantheman 17y ago
  Agreed, software patents need to go. I'd also throw in business method, and biological (dna) patents out too. If we step back and look at intellectual property, I think it can be safe to start arguing against all intellectual property other than trademarks.
  - pbhj 17y ago
    To play devil's advocate: Why should someone researching battery materials, testing various combinations for charge holding and minimal voltage fluctuation, etc., be rewarded with a patent when someone doing the same with DNA sequences for increase grain yields be prevented from getting a patent. What about a new type of phone closure mechanism. There are thousands of patent applications (or were in my day, though I never worked on this material) for phone flips and sliders. What about a qubit based factorisation circuit - and then how about the completely novel software required to pass instructions to that circuit. The hardware interface between qubit and IC, how about when it's done using FPGA (effectively software). How about software alterations that alter the battery use in a phone through microswitching that extends the battery life beyond the benefits of the new materials in my first example. Why rule out software that can have a greater hard physical effect and allow hardware that may not make as good an improvement. (note "technical effect" is a route to getting a software patent in Europe).
    - dantheman 17y ago
      I personally thing that government involvement in the market, granting monopolies is actually harmful and we should abolish all intellectual property. Now it is proper for the government to stop fraud so trademarks and plagiarism would still be valid government concerns, but deciding what deserves and does not deserve a monopoly would be out of its reach.
      - blasdel 17y ago
        The problem is more that these days the patent publication is totally useless -- it doesn't describe anything useful for copying the 'invention', and is totally obvious to boot. The government is granting a not-so 'limited monopoly' for what is essentially a trade secret. If software patents required full disclosure of source code and schematics, they wouldn't be nearly as shitty.
- jrockway 17y ago
  I am talking about the case where a company "sponsors" University research and then owns all rights to anything the research team creates (via patents). Get your own research team, that's not what the universities are for, especially ones my taxes pay for.

jacquesm 17y ago

If it is publicly funded definitely. Otherwise there might be restrictions (I'm not in favour of universities being in bed with companies but I understand there is a lot of money involved and that combined with the push for "applicable research" (in other words stuff that makes money) makes it harder for universities to resist such funding.

wmf 17y ago
How common is it for the funder and copyright holder to be the same? I do corporate research and the copyright on my papers ends up owned by ACM, IEEE, Usenix, etc.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Which is absolutely beyond the pale. Tax money I give to the government, they give it to the universities who then do research and I'm locked out of the results.

oldgregg 17y ago

Journals don't take up that much bandwidth-- someone just needs to get around to launching thepiratejournal.org.

sethjohn 17y ago
I thought through this with a friend a while ago. The problem isn't getting the bandwidth to upload the content, the problem is getting access to content in the first place. In order to download PDFs of these papers, you need to have a subscription through your school/institution. The publishers will notice very quickly if someone starts downloading an entire journal's worth of articles.
- chris11 17y ago
  I think a lot of professors put up their papers on their own websites. But that would really be a pain getting the articles from different places.

lutorm 17y ago

I'm not entirely convinced of this. I totally believe in open access, but putting papers in the public domain would mean that people could lift content and pass it off as theirs, which I think should not be allowed. (It would still be unethical, of course, but I'm not sure that is a big deterrent for some individuals.) Maybe the standard should be to license papers under something like the Creative Commons Attribution license.

wmf 17y ago
Who has used copyright law to punish plagiarism? This "feature" isn't worth preserving if no one uses it.
- pbhj 17y ago
  I use CC licenses, usually BY-NC-SA. I don't actively enforce it but I feel I have a right to be named and to have a cut of the money if others are making money directly from my work without otherwise requesting permission. Copyright enables this: I have the right to label the work as mine, I have the right to license it as I see fit. If you plagiarise my work (not worth it!) I don't have the funds to chase you, if I did I would and I feel the law should give me that option. If you credit me and share any derivative works then I'm happy for you to use it, unless you've maliciously amended it and are crediting me - then copyright gives me remedies. Copyright terms stink like pig shit. Copyright is not all bad.
pbhj 17y ago
At last someone else who realises that copyright is not just about financial considerations but includes the moral rights too. Without copyright licenses like GPL won't work as the license is no longer more liberal than the status quo but instead is attempting to add restrictions. Without copyright you have no right to be named as an author of a work; you have no way (outside libel law) to prevent a spiteful sod from modifying your work to discredit you. FWIW those who receive funding from taxation, IMO, should be required to release the results under a BY-SA style license.

justin_vanw 17y ago

So, you have a job where you are required to show up for 6-12 hours per week, 8 months per year. For this you are paid between $60k and $200k per year. As part of this job, you are expected to publish papers which document your original work for the benefit of mankind. Any professor who doesn't put any and all work they do while employed by a public university into the public domain (or the closest thing allowed by their university) is the lowest of the low. I can't describe how I feel about such a person without a very large amount of swearing. Suppose someone came to your house and tell you that they want to work on a way to make your electric bill go down, but unless you give them some money up front they won't have enough time to both hold down an outside job and work on your electric bill. Then, after a while, you ask them how it's going. They tell you that you can see the results of their work if you pay them $50. That is exactly what some people do, except they collect less money and collect it from way more people. Dirtbags.

Locke1689 17y ago
Yeah, FUCK professors! Just because they've spent an inordinate amount of time becoming experts in their field, including extensive vetting by their renowned colleagues, they just expect things like "jobs" or "credit." Who the fuck do they think they are?!
- justin_vanw 17y ago
  What do you think about what I said though?
scott_s 17y ago
Most researchers make their work as publicly available as possible. It's in their benefit to do so: the onus is on them to convince their peers their work is good and significant. In order to do so, they want to make it as easy to find as possible. Also, your time breakdown of a professor's week is absurd. They're required to be in class for 6-12 hours per week, but every (good) hour of lecture requires about three hours of prep time. Grading work takes time. And their greatest time sink is research. A young professor trying to attain tenure is putting in 60-70 hour weeks, 12 months of the year. Research continues when classes aren't in session. You're getting upset over the actions of a person who doesn't exist.