Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#361

Post by drewm1980 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 12:25 PM UTC

throwawaybookst wrote: post #340

a3_nm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the venue. In computer science, it is often possible, but there are often weird restrictions: embargo delay, only the preprint, must include a link to the publisher version, only on a personal webpage or on certain kinds of repositories, copyright assignment has been signed as well, etc. So you don't always feel comfortable doing it. Further, we academics are incentivized, in terms of career, to publish…

Don't people in CS just ignore that crap and post free PDFs of "preprints" (taken the second before submission of camera ready) on personal websites? IME the publishers fuck up the formatting anyways.

Yes. Yes they do. RE formatting, publishers ~do enforce page limits, which has value... if you're publishing on paper.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#362

Post by dalke » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 12:29 PM UTC

gd1 wrote: post #336

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social and cultural value of something is related to the cost of production, not the cost of distribution. The fact that the distribution cost is close to zero is irrelevant. The problem with copyright is that a big proportion of the price charged is basically cartel/gatekeeper protection money, and has no useful relationship to the true social cost/value of creative work.

You can spin it however you want, but if you are keeping something of worth artificially scarce when it is in fact infinitely abundant, you are deliberately impoverishing the human race. The rules of our economy, supply and demand, break down when supply is infinite... but that is a problem with the economic system that needs to be fixed (perhaps a state funded patronage model?), it's not something that pirates need…

Copyright law does not reduce the net wealth of the world.

Before I wrote book X, there were no copies of book X in the world. The supply was zero, not infinite.

After I wrote book X, the supply was one. Then it grows as people make copies. Copyright law can limit the growth, certainly. (Or enhancement, as the potential profits help promote distribution.)

But copyright law is meant to encourage the growth from 0 to 1 by making it possible to make money from the growth from 1 to N, before the lack of copyright protection makes it effectively infinite.

It's true that plenty of people will write even without getting paid. It's also true that plenty of people wrote because they will get paid. Heinlein started writing to pay off his mortgage.

Copyright law is also the basis for free software. If you take away copyright law, you end up supporting proprietary software distributed only as compiled machine code, not reusable source. This to "impoverishes" the human race.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#363

Post by drewm1980 » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 12:43 PM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #40

sigjuice wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, what paper is this?

All of them.

70's graph theory papers FTW! I bet if you actually pay that $40, the pdf you get will still be typeset with a typewriter.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#364

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #357

chris_wot wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, and even the Act before it (the Copyright Act of 1976) seems to rather violate the constitution then: 1. It doesn't promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts 2. 120 years since creation or 95 years since publication for corporations, or the life of the author plus 70 years is not what I would call particularly "limited Times". There may be 200+ years of belief in cop…

Your objections were presented to the Supreme Court, who decided they were not actually un-Constitutional in Eldred v. Ashcroft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft . You won't be the first to disagree with a Supreme Court decision. But the only recourse you have is get the courts change their mind in the future, or amend the Constitution. I have a hard time empathizing with an argument which, with the c…

"My" objections? Alrighty then.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#365

Post by comicjk » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

drewm1980 wrote: post #354

comicjk wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to point out that a journal is not purely a proxy or even an aggregator - I've gotten more detailed peer review with the bigger journals, because the reviewers are more critical and the editors more selective. I didn't start out as a fan of peer review, but now I say the more the better; it has markedly increased the quality of all of my papers which have undergone it.

I think reviews tend to be overly critical primarily because reviewers are forced to find excuses to reject 9/10 of the papers that landed on their desk, most of which they weren't even interested in reading. I strongly believe that review could be almost exclusively through positive feedback, with crowd-sourced minimal annotations in the margins, i.e. "the idea in this paragraph came from ", and "this idea is novel;…

It is not my experience that reviewers are overly critical. The notes I have seen fall into three categories: 1) pointing out the nagging issue that I knew but avoided, 2) misunderstandings, which are annoying but show how the paper is not clear enough, 3) genuine insights which I would not have seen. I have never wanted these to be more positive, but I can see the benefits such a cultural shift would have. Phrasing the notes as positive feedback would benefit the happiness of the authors, but make the notes lengthier and increase the effort for the (volunteer) reviewers. I wonder if the editor could reframe the reviewers' notes to improve the tone before sending them to the authors?

At least in chemistry where I work, a rejection rate of 9/10 at the review stage would be very unusual. It is possible that reviewers in the triage stage are harsher but I never see these reviews.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#366

Post by dalke » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:20 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #364

dalke wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your objections were presented to the Supreme Court, who decided they were not actually un-Constitutional in Eldred v. Ashcroft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft . You won't be the first to disagree with a Supreme Court decision. But the only recourse you have is get the courts change their mind in the future, or amend the Constitution. I have a hard time empathizing with an argument which, with the c…

"My" objections? Alrighty then.

Are our wires crossed again? I don't understand the point behind your reply.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#367

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:25 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #366

chris_wot wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My" objections? Alrighty then.

Are our wires crossed again? I don't understand the point behind your reply.

Your comment seemed a bit... personal. Whilst you had some decent points, it seemed like you were more arguing against my character.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#368

Post by apricot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

maaku wrote: post #317

aab0 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more practical advice: 'use Libgen'.

I somehow misread that as 'use Lojban' and was momentarily both confused and delighted :\

Indeed,"Lojban" and "practical" in the same sentence is not something you see every day.

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#369

Post by apricot » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 2:52 PM UTC

timrpeterson wrote: post #270

Chathamization wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this. The researchers don't get paid for their paper, and it seems like the peer reviewers don't get paid for doing the peer review: http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-scie... So why exactly are publications locking these papers behind massively expensive paywalls when writing them and reviewing them are being done for free?

Because they can and academic scientists don't do anything to change the status quo.

I wouldn't say scientists are doing nothing. See for instance the "Cost of Knowledge" project spearheaded by top mathematicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Knowledge

Re: Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

#370

Post by dalke » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #367

dalke wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are our wires crossed again? I don't understand the point behind your reply.

Your comment seemed a bit... personal. Whilst you had some decent points, it seemed like you were more arguing against my character.

I had no intention to argue against your character, nor upon rereading do I see myself doing that.

I do argue against the meaningfulness of your comments, given the judgement in Eldred, and given the last 250 years of incessant technological change. I also think you, like many, see the near history with a much better focus than the further past. But that is not a character flaw.