Edward Tufte’s defense of Aaron Swartz and the “marvelously different”

Right now they have created a significant amount of noise in the press. And what we're mostly hearing is "fire Ortiz," "fire Heymann," "punish MIT," "punish JSTOR, and "reform CFAA" with "reform prosecutions for all" a distance sixth, if mentioned at all. Taren spoke about reforming the justice system, but only after the above list. And the press (at least NPR) has been talking about plea bargains in the context of drug and inner city crime and the leverage prosecutors have on defendants life.

I'm fully on board with trying to fix the problem for all. I'm not down with trying to only fix the problems for friends of Lessig, Tufte and O'Reilly.

What you've written in regard to this point has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. See http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/mixed_economy.html.

"The idea that a person's knowledge should be hidden behind paywalls"

A person's knowledge is the result of his own mental and physical effort. The rest of the world, no matter their number, has no right to dictate that he shares his knowledge, nor do they have the right to dictate the terms that he proposes. This is because he has a right to his life. Anything less than that is slavery.

Morally speaking, a man does not owe another man a basket of picked cotton just because he happens to be black. In the same way, one man does not owe another man money, a job, a scientific article, or a movie just because he happens to be able. Need is not a valid claim on anyone's life.

I wouldn't find it at all surprising if the various universities/journals/research bodies figure out how to make this research, much (majority) of which has been paid for by the public, available to the public.

I am one of the most "pro-ip-protection/opposed to copyright infringement" people on HN, and look down on anyone who violates producers/authors rights on commercial content - but I firmly stand with Aaron on the "Make research knowledge free to everyone" side.

Perhaps, then, you should reconsider the people (like me) who are saying that the application of copyright to academic publications must be ended. The reason, as far as I am concerned, is simple: expanding access to knowledge and to education is crucial for maintaining a just legal system in any democratic society. The better educated the general public is, the better able they are to keep politicians in check, to fix problems like overreaching prosecutors, to reform laws that make no sense, and to ensure that minor crimes do not bring overly harsh punishments.

We cannot claim that everyone has equal access to education if academic publications are prohibitively expensive. At one time, that was a situation that simply could not be changed, because the publishing industry was the best way to disseminate knowledge and we were better off monetizing that system. In the 1970s, that changed when global computer networks that could connect low-cost personal computers became a reality; today, we can rapidly disseminate textbooks, scientific journals, course notes, and recordings of lectures and discussions at low cost. Even the poorest schools and libraries in America have computers with Internet access, and could theoretically gain access to what would be the largest library in human history if we took the time to build it. It is just one piece of the puzzle, of course, but it is an important piece.

The only thing holding us back now is, ironically, copyright law -- the very legal system that was originally meant to ensure that knowledge could be spread far and wide has transformed into a system that cripples our ability to spread our knowledge. Instead of the Internet becoming home to the world's most expansive library, it has become a system for further restricting access to information. Instead of being able to read whatever published research we want, we are forced to navigate a maze of paywalls. Textbook publishers are now using their copyrights and the Internet to kill the used book market, and are experimenting with ways to create books that students can only read for a limited time before they must pay again.

If JSTOR does indeed provide a necessary service, if they are not just leeches taking advantageous of our anachronistic approach to academic publishing, let them prove it: end the copyrights on academic publications, and let JSTOR show us how important their search service truly is by charging for access to it. I have my doubts that a peer-to-peer search service would not be equally useful and much cheaper, but right now there is no way to test that theory. If you can name something important that academic publishers and companies like JSTOR do with the money they bring in that could not be done equally well or better using today's technology, please do so (note that, at least in the case of scientific articles, the writing, formatting, reviewing, and often even editing are not paid for by the publisher, and so you should not bother naming any of the above).

So if you want to fix a problem that affects everyone, perhaps you should be thinking about that problem.

I feel as if the tech community is still trying to figure out the collective action thing. Maybe it's because we don't have the history of unions* like many workers in hollywood/entertainment industry do. But when the tech community did act collectively to stop SOPA, it made a big difference. I hope we can do more of that.

(* which is fine -- I don't think you can make the economic case for having them in the highly competitive tech job market. Unionization is more strongly justified in cases of bad working conditions, or a single employer with an effective monopoly on that type of job in the region)