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

danwin.com

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

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"today's mixed economy" Today's economy is not really relevant to something that happened in 1975. Things have greatly changed since then, particularly when it comes to the dissemination of human knowledge. In today's world, a book can be published at no cost over the Internet. Scholarly articles, course notes, recordings of course lectures, and all the other methods of communicating knowledge can all be done rapidly…

"today's mixed economy" 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, n…

> A person's knowledge is the result of his own mental and physical effort.

A person's knowledge hasn't been the result of his own mental and physical effort since the stone age, and probably earlier. We all gain our knowledge by studying the words of those before us, and then we may be able to contribute a tiny piece to that giant interlocking puzzle ourselves.

The 'ownership' of those new pieces now belongs to publishing houses that themselves did not contribute to the knowledge.

Restricting the free flow of knowledge is unethical.

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

#52
post #5

Oh, another old counter-culture guy who egged on an impressionable kid. How sad that Aaron's attempt to strike a blow like those of his mentors was so squalid. Kids, I'll tell you since these heroes won't: if your "hack" involves picking locks, buying multiple computers to bypass a download limit, and violating terms of use, it's not a movement and it is not heroic. Don't let these lazy essayits lead you down this pa…

I can understand why you are being down-voted here. The lad was being crushed by a machine that appears, to me, from outside the US, to be outrageously harsh. I personally would say (based on decades of trade union membership and action), 'don't go alone, random, but instead organise and take it one collective action at a time'. The young man in question may never have experienced collective action . It can be powerf…

If I understand correctly, he was actively involved in the collective action against SOPA.

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

#53

" ...in this part, Tufte related how he told Aaron, half-seriously, that Aaron’s main fault was downloading millions of articles when only a few thousand were worth downloading. " So true; the trick is in recognising and curating those few thousand.

The commonly accepted metric for "worthwhile" articles would be the number of citations they have received from other articles. One could conceivably figure out, through some clever parsing, which articles have been cited the most.

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think lots of people care, but they are not capable of marshalling a significant amount of noise in the press. 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…

"I'm fully on board with trying to fix the problem for all." 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,…

Perhaps, then, you should reconsider the people (like me) who are saying that the application of copyright to academic publications must be ended.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025852

I've been on board for some time now. However...

expanding access to knowledge and to education is crucial for maintaining a just legal system in any democratic society

Yeah, that sounds good, but realistically an open JSTOR doesn't stop five poor black kids in NYC or a shitload of poor kids in Chicago from facing jail time forced on them by aggressive prosecutors via coerced confessions.

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

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"today's mixed economy" Today's economy is not really relevant to something that happened in 1975. Things have greatly changed since then, particularly when it comes to the dissemination of human knowledge. In today's world, a book can be published at no cost over the Internet. Scholarly articles, course notes, recordings of course lectures, and all the other methods of communicating knowledge can all be done rapidly…

"today's mixed economy" 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, n…

"The rest of the world, no matter their number, has no right to dictate that he shares his knowledge"

Perhaps not, but why should I be allowed to dictate to you what you are allowed to do with knowledge that I impart to you? Put another way, if I publish a paper describing knowledge I have developed, why shouldn't anyone who receives that paper be permitted to spread that knowledge further -- and if so, why not by simply giving copies of the paper to others?

"Anything less than that is slavery."

I think perhaps you missed part of the definition of slavery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery

Did anyone say that anything about forcing someone to work? Did anyone say anything about not paying someone for their work, if that person demands payment? No, nobody is talking about that. What we are talking about is what we can do with the products of a person's work once those products have been made available to us.

Almost all the scientific papers that are published today are written by people who are paid to do research and to share the results of their research with others. Very few scientific articles are written by unpaid volunteers (even grad students typically receive some compensation for their time). This is not a question of paying for research, because research is already paid for and would continue to be paid for in the absence of the publishing industry. If a researcher does not want other people to read the articles he writes, he can refuse to publish -- he can take his secrets to his grave.

Copyrights are not and have never been a natural right. Copyright, as applied to academic publishing, has only ever been a system for promoting the dissemination of knowledge by monetizing a publishing industry. Researchers routinely assign their copyrights to publishers when they publish articles, losing whatever claim they had to preventing copies of the work from being made. We no longer need publishers to spread knowledge across our nation because we have a better system, the Internet, and therefore copyrights on academic work have outlived their usefulness.

The comparison to slavery is pedantic and misleading. Slaves do not have a legal option to not do as commanded by their masters; in a world without copyrights on academic work, researchers would have a legal option, which is not publishing their work.

"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"

Which is fine: you are free to not publish your work. You will probably not get very far as a career researcher if you refuse to publish, but that is your problem and not mine. It is not really society's problem either, because there is no shortage of researchers who willingly publish their work, nor is there any shortage of researchers who will willingly publish their work in the absence of copyrights. Ayn Rand's notion that copyrights are a necessary function of government was absurdly misguided, but we can forgive her because as an author she profited from copyright (unlike researchers, who rarely profit from copyrights on their knowledge). Copyrights are a means to an end, and in the age of the Internet, copyrights on academic works have completely outlived their usefulness.

Your right to not teach others what you know is not in question here; rather, the question is whether or not I can teach others something you taught me. Considering that human civilization exists because we have spent generations passing knowledge along and it was only very recently that we even considered forbidding people from spreading knowledge, I would think that there is no real moral dilemma there and that the answer to the question should be obvious.

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

#57
post #3
post #2

As well as Tufte, the video at the end of the post, where Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman talks, is well worth listening to.

I hope someone takes the time to transcribe it...at the end of an already emotionally draining service, Taren still managed to bring out a collective, audible weeping in the packed auditorium. She was very aggressive on her calls to make sure the prosecuting attorneys face reproach. But interestingly, Carmen Ortiz was mostly mentioned in passing. Stephen Heymann by far was the target of Taren's anger.

Here's a transcription of Taren's eulogy (consider it a rough draft -- I don't have time to check it carefully now):

http://mretc.net/~cris/swartz-transcripts/taren-transcript.t...

If anybody does read it along with the video, please feel free to send me any corrections (or change the txt file and send me a diff). Thanks!

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

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm fully on board with trying to fix the problem for all." 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,…

Perhaps, then, you should reconsider the people (like me) who are saying that the application of copyright to academic publications must be ended. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025852 I've been on board for some time now. However... expanding access to knowledge and to education is crucial for maintaining a just legal system in any democratic society Yeah, that sounds good, but realistically an open JSTOR does…

There is no need to choose though, we can fix all those things.

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

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major difference that sticks out for me in your comparison is that free access to long distance calls is optional but free access to knowledge is not. A second difference is that it seemed there was a dialogue going, a dialogue during which if a similar one had happened between MIT and Aaron, MIT might have found out they were about to destroy something precious. AT&T, that well-known bastion of freedom and openn…

It's worth noting that for most of the twentieth century AT&T was a driving force for scientific and engineering innovation in the US, greater than most universities (though perhaps not MIT). Researchers there won seven Nobel prizes, and two Turing awards. On a more mundane note, Unix was invented there, as well as C and C++, and the photovoltaic cell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs#Discoveries_and_devel... N…

I talked to Tufte after the event. It wasn't anyone from the Labs that talked to him, it was a corporate security guy.

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

#60
I talked to Tufte after the event. It seems this was the first time, apart from some late-night cocktail parties, that he'd spoken about it publicly. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/01/edward-tufte-was-p... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086036
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