5 ms·

More than that, he was scraping private resources that were freely populated. He was not robbing content creators of their money. He was circumventing a paywall

by jamra 12y ago

More than that, he was scraping private resources that were freely populated. He was not robbing content creators of their money. He was circumventing a paywall to what should be free data.

web007 12y ago
Is OSVDB any different? "Open Source" Vulnerability Database implies openness. The maintainers are trying to implement a paywall. I feel bad for OSVDB from a sysadmin perspective, but if Aaron's case was so polarizing for essentially the same thing, why isn't everyone jumping on the Hate Train here?
npizzolato 12y ago
That's quite the mental leap. He was circumventing a paywall, but that's not robbing anyone of money because it should have been free in the first place? Well, it wasn't free, even if you think you it should be. Thus the paywall.
- codezero 12y ago
  To that point, the people who submitted to the journal did so knowing that it costs money to access, it wasn't as if they were tricked into contributing to a private pay-wall journal.
  - Blahah 12y ago
    For most scientists there isn't another system, and certainly when the system was established nobody was envisaging a time when publishers would make hundreds of % markup on every access of a paper. The prices reflect print publishing costs and the historical lack of a cheap distribution system like the internet. Now we have a hangover where people's careers are judged on their ability to publish in high-impact journals, all of which charge several thousand pounds extra to make the paper Open Access. So we're not tricked, but we do it under duress. The system is changing, Aaron helped.
- jsight 12y ago
  Some of the content on JSTOR was actually public domain content. At the time, JSTOR did not make this publicly available. It is definitely debatable to consider the downloading and distribution of public domain material to be robbery. Since then, JSTOR has released these documents freely themselves[1]. They have also stated that this was their intention all along. [1] http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-journal-content-and-serving-%E2%80%9Cunaffiliated%E2%80%9D-users http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-...

by jamra 12y ago

More than that, he was scraping private resources that were freely populated. He was not robbing content creators of their money. He was circumventing a paywall to what should be free data.

web007 12y ago

Is OSVDB any different? "Open Source" Vulnerability Database implies openness. The maintainers are trying to implement a paywall. I feel bad for OSVDB from a sysadmin perspective, but if Aaron's case was so polarizing for essentially the same thing, why isn't everyone jumping on the Hate Train here?

npizzolato 12y ago

That's quite the mental leap. He was circumventing a paywall, but that's not robbing anyone of money because it should have been free in the first place? Well, it wasn't free, even if you think you it should be. Thus the paywall.

codezero 12y ago
To that point, the people who submitted to the journal did so knowing that it costs money to access, it wasn't as if they were tricked into contributing to a private pay-wall journal.
- Blahah 12y ago
  For most scientists there isn't another system, and certainly when the system was established nobody was envisaging a time when publishers would make hundreds of % markup on every access of a paper. The prices reflect print publishing costs and the historical lack of a cheap distribution system like the internet. Now we have a hangover where people's careers are judged on their ability to publish in high-impact journals, all of which charge several thousand pounds extra to make the paper Open Access. So we're not tricked, but we do it under duress. The system is changing, Aaron helped.
jsight 12y ago
Some of the content on JSTOR was actually public domain content. At the time, JSTOR did not make this publicly available. It is definitely debatable to consider the downloading and distribution of public domain material to be robbery. Since then, JSTOR has released these documents freely themselves[1]. They have also stated that this was their intention all along. [1] http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-journal-content-and-serving-%E2%80%9Cunaffiliated%E2%80%9D-users http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor%E2%80%93free-access-early-...