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Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

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Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#391

Post by DANmode »

foldr wrote: post #387
DANmode wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JSTOR does actual legit work to make scientific articles easier to access Just link (or specifically mention) a few things they’ve done that people really appreciate. No need to keep repeating the claim.

JSTOR provides digital access to print journal archives. That's useful to anyone who wants to read an old journal article without going to a physical library. I used to have to go to the library, dig out the relevant issue of Linguistic Inquiry , and photocopy it. Then in 2015, JSTOR started providing access to the entire scanned Linguistic Inquiry archive, so I could access all of those issues digitally. I don't und…

> JSTOR provides digital access to print journal archives

So does SciHub.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#392

Post by foldr »

DANmode wrote: post #391
foldr wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JSTOR provides digital access to print journal archives. That's useful to anyone who wants to read an old journal article without going to a physical library. I used to have to go to the library, dig out the relevant issue of Linguistic Inquiry , and photocopy it. Then in 2015, JSTOR started providing access to the entire scanned Linguistic Inquiry archive, so I could access all of those issues digitally. I don't und…

> JSTOR provides digital access to print journal archives So does SciHub.

SciHub mainly redistributes scans of print archives made by JSTOR and other organisations. And it does not have everything that JSTOR has. For example, this paper is not, as far as I can tell, available on SciHub:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4178697

Somehow, you appreciate SciHub without appreciating one of the organizations that did the actual work necessary to make many of those PDFs exist in the first place:

https://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-and-apex-covantage-mark-2...

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#393

Post by czgov »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #374
czgov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. Those health insurance companies are doing God’s working protecting us all. They have no part in why our system is heinously overpriced as you put it.

Of course there are plenty of complaints to be made about insurers. The death panels aren’t one of them though. Mangione had a horrible, incurable back issue, and wanted an expensive experimental treatment that wouldn’t work. It was good that he was told no, if only to stop him from getting his hopes up. The rest of us not getting scammed is nice too.

No complaints from me about for profit insurance companies withholding treatment. They are doing the Lord’s work. We need them. Stephen Helmsley deserves more than $61 million a year.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#394

Post by mcv »

loeg wrote: post #380
mcv wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The justification is that it's supposed to protect the individual creative from more powerful publishers just taking and copying their stuff. In practice, it seems to mostly protect the interests of the most powerful party.

No, it has nothing to do with relative power. It is about economic incentives to encourage creation -- the "business models" you deride in your earlier comment. > The primary purpose behind copyright law is to foster the creation and dissemination of works for the benefit of the public. By granting authors the exclusive right to authorize certain uses of their works, copyright provides economic incentives to create n…

You confuse words with outcomes. The fact that they say that that's the intent, doesn't mean that it's always the outcome. Copyright offers the most protection if you've got the funds to litigate. The government isn't going to do it for you. And copyright has absolutely been used to stifle the creation and dissemination of works for the benefit of the public.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#396

Post by pdonis »

tzs wrote: post #308
pdonis wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The information Swartz was downloading was scientific papers that we, the public, have already paid for with our tax dollars. The crime here is that the government allows JSTOR and other private companies to still hold those papers behind paywalls instead of releasing them into the public domain as they should have been.

JSTOR didn't own the copyright to any of the material, so could only serve it under the license agreements it had. Nevertheless they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users. A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizin…

> they were able to arrange for their license to allow over 10000 schools, libraries, and other institutions to provide free access to walk-in users.

Sure, but that still only covers a miniscule fraction of US taxpayers. Plus, you have to walk in to the school, library, or other institution, instead of just being able to use your web browser at home.

> A large number of the material on JSTOR wouldn't be online at all if not for JSTOR, because they have put a lot of time and money into digitizing back issues of journals that the publishers probably would have never gotten around to.

This is a genuine value add, but it could have been paid for by the government directly without then having the material behind a paywall.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#397

Post by DANmode »

foldr wrote: post #392
DANmode wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JSTOR provides digital access to print journal archives So does SciHub.

SciHub mainly redistributes scans of print archives made by JSTOR and other organisations. And it does not have everything that JSTOR has. For example, this paper is not, as far as I can tell, available on SciHub: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4178697 Somehow, you appreciate SciHub without appreciating one of the organizations that did the actual work necessary to make many of those PDFs exist in the first place: http…

Are you being intentionally obtuse?

If the JSTOR copy didn’t exist, the pre-print copy would be scraped from the author’s website,

or the text / results submitted by the author or someone close anonymously.

Less, more slowly, but the same point.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#398

Post by DANmode »

foldr wrote: post #389
DANmode wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public money does go to the costs of that. That’s where most of the PDFs come from.

Hmm, no. In the case of old print journal archives scanned by JSTOR, it's JSTOR paying the cost of the scanning.

Anyone can scan, host, and curate - including one or many peers.

We do not need any entity in between researchers and other researchers.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#399

Post by jongjong »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #265
jongjong wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all started going downhill once they started calling corporations "legal persons" and gave them all the same right as people, but without all of the constraints associated with having a body. A corporation has more legal rights than a person if you think about it; no wonder they took over. A corporation can't go to jail, doesn't need a visa to work in a foreign country. Imagine if the legal system took jail off th…

>It all started going downhill once they started calling corporations "legal persons" and gave them all the same right as people, but The 1860s? Or do you meant he royal charter companies from centuries prior? This goes back so far that you can't even understand it. >A corporation has more legal rights than a person if you think about it; no wonder they took over. A corporation can't Corporations only exist because y…

The root problem here is that I have no voice and have no real friends to join forces with. I literally have zero power to change the system. Wealth inequality puts my interests at odds with those who benefit from the current system.

At my level as a software engineer, it's impossible to make friends because everyone is trying to back-stab each other constantly. It's extremely low trust.

You can't change the laws of your country when you're so alone that you can't even trust colleagues you see every day.

I had a co-founder/friend (past tense) whose background was in HR and he wanted to build a tool to help software devs find jobs and he was telling me that referrals is the best way to get a job... I had to explain to him how cut-throat the competition is with engineers... They're not going to give referrals for people they only met online. I mean, inside the company, some colleagues are trying to sabotage or slander each other over a promotion. Not friend material.

Just to give an idea of my experience with referrals (and low-trust environment) as a software engineer; I only provided a referral for 'ex-colleagues/friends' twice in my career; first time was a guy who didn't have a job who was in open source and I had known online and spoke regularly for 2 years; they literally lied to my boss and backstabbed me and didn't even join the company... I didn't do any referrals after that... For years... But eventually I met another engineer who was very good and a nice guy and I thought "this guy is smart and friendly and he explicitly asked me for a referral" so I gave his details to my employer... But he got cold feet and although he didn't slander me to my boss with salacious lies, his cold feet made me look bad. So that's it, I don't do referrals anymore.

Re: Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

#400

Post by deaux »

pocksuppet wrote: post #390
deaux wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBTF is not a thing. It's all in your mind. Evergrande and Country Garden would've been classified TBTF in the minds of many USians, yet they failed. The dead comment below by AnthonyMouse already pointed out that even in your scenario there's no difference with the status quo anyway. It's insane that it's dead and reeks of astroturfing, as nothing about it is worth flagging. > Isn't that the other way around? The la…

Both of your supposed counterexamples are Chinese. China does things differently from the USA.

My counterexamples prove exactly the point; TBTF is fugazi, arbitrary, something in your head.
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