Academics sharing paywalled papers with a codeword on Twitter

Post by kragen » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 10:36 AM UTC

stegosaurus wrote: post #17

ajuc wrote: post #3

Good for them. Living in developing country you learn to ignore copyright or you never learn anything. I don't know if it was invented as a way for developed countries to keep competive advantage, but it sure would work that way if people actually obeyed.

Mmm. As a poor person growing up in Britain I hold the same viewpoint. The whole argument around piracy and copyright seems to revolve around this idea of being 'too cheap' or 'not wanting to support'. When 10GBP for some music or 100+GBP for some software package (Office, for example) is 50% or more of your monthly pay, or you have no income at all, none of those factors come in to the decision. It's the only realis…

Post by wolfgke » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 10:37 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #22

kragen wrote: post #11

The only "online piracy" I see here is when Elsevier demands US$30 from you to get a copy of a paper written by scientists paid for by your tax dollars, who paid Elsevier page fees to publish it . Elsevier and similar companies are the thieves here, and they have a hell of a lot of nerve to be accusing scientists of "stealing" and "piracy" for working to create the very knowledge Elsevier shamelessly exploits. (Even…

Agree completely with the idea of your comment, but I have to nitpick on one thing: > So did the Pope when he sentenced Galileo to life in prison for promoting heliocentrism. As far as we can tell, Galileo was persecuted by the Pope not because of science, but because Galileo was basically an asshole, who abused his friendship with the Pope and then kept venting out against him. The issue was strictly political. See…

Post by masklinn » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 10:39 AM UTC

Asbostos wrote: post #21

kragen wrote: post #11

The only "online piracy" I see here is when Elsevier demands US$30 from you to get a copy of a paper written by scientists paid for by your tax dollars, who paid Elsevier page fees to publish it . Elsevier and similar companies are the thieves here, and they have a hell of a lot of nerve to be accusing scientists of "stealing" and "piracy" for working to create the very knowledge Elsevier shamelessly exploits. (Even…

Scientists still love giving up their rights to Elsevier though. They're as much to blame as the publisher. Maybe something would start to happen if scientists preferentially avoided citing non-openly published papers. They won't though, because their work is too competitive, but it might help to put a damper on it.

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 10:40 AM UTC

Kristine1975 wrote: post #31

TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. I owe my whole career to piracy[0]. Now that I earn money I am happy to buy stuff I need and give back to society, creators, etc. But to a teenager from a middle-class family of a developing country, piracy was strictly about access to otherwise unavailable educational material. It's an open secret that Adobe and Microsoft had a model of non-enforcing piracy for private use, and I think it's pretty good. It…

> but in the area of education and science, limiting access is holding back the progress of the entire human race. Although I doubt Adobe and Microsoft did this out of altruism: By allowing piracy of their software for private use, it became widely used, and at work people wanted to continue using the software they knew -- this time paying for it.

Post by dalke » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 10:41 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #29

masklinn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a cheaper solution for foundational papers. Go to your library and use interlibrary loan. Not sure that's really an option when not in the US.

I think people in the US don't realize how much better the US library system is than most of the rest of the world. Even the developed world!