31–40 of 69 posts
This is bullshit. Coming from academia, I can say that the only people who benefit from this system are the publishers and the institutions. Everyone else is under the wheel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you want them shut down or something? They can't legally do that. They've taken measures to try and get more articles out there in recent years for free: - Alumni are soon going to be able to freely access all articles. - Registered researches can access all articles for free. - Anyone can now read three articles every two weeks for free. Doing what you say would immediately shut down JSTOR and they couldn't conti…
oh yeah measures in recent years? -the first point is not even rolled out -there is no such thing as a registered researcher. The institution needs to register -the last point you mention got rolled out only 5 days ago. JSTOR has more negative than positives. I cannot think of one positive thing in this day and age about JSTOR. It should be open. Period. There hand will be forced someday and the great part is, as usu…
Without JSTOR: there would be no online access at all to many journals, and there would be many with online access between individual paywalls at the individual journal.
With JSTOR: online access is available to many journals it would not otherwise be available for; online access is greatly more convenient for many for-pay journals than it otherwise would be.
How can you not see positives in this? They are strictly making things MORE accessible than they otherwise would be.
Would it be better if these things were even more accessible? Sure--but these are things JSTOR does NOT own the rights to.
from this statement alone it isn't clear to me at all in what sense they "regretted being drawn into" the case.
if JSTOR is institutionally incapable of acknowledging that prosecutorial abuse played a significant role in this tragedy, of specifically acknowledging and denouncing abuse under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act [1], it can't be taken seriously as a "member of the internet community".
0. http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bull...
1. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/feds-go-overboard...
IMO, JSTOR isn't directly to blame. They are operating within a broken system, and it seems like they are doing what they can. Academic publishing is what needs a serious overhaul. After having worked in an academic library and, more recently, leading technology operations for a prominent new ebook publisher and article archive, the first two words that come to mind when I think of both publishing (academic and trade…
I understand that entrenched ideology is a problem, but boards and committees are controls that exist for a reason. With what are you going to replace bureaucracy? The lone-wolf visionary with no regard for other people's needs is a proven model in technology start-ups (Jobs, Zuckerberg), but what makes you think that's an appropriate way to run a university library?
"as one of the largest archives of scholarly literature in the world, we must be careful stewards of the information entrusted to us by the owners and creators of that content." Tax dollars in every country I know of go to pay professors and researchers salaries ie. the contributors to to all these journals, so why all the articles aren't fully available public access has never been clear to me. Frankly, it makes me…
I do think JSTOR could institutionally be run in a more progressive manner. They can't fix the problem, but they could put a bit more pressure in the right direction. I'm hopeful that moves like Early Journal Content are showing some signs of that, though I could just be overly optimistic. But in either case, ultimately they aren't the ones who can make the decision to do anything about the post-1923 content. For past content, the journals who hold the copyrights are going to have to be convinced to open it up, and for future content, academics are going to have to start publishing in open-access venues in the first place.
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>I want a world where the scientific enterprise grows beyond academia. I want a world where the collective intelligence of humanity can be brought to bear on humanity's most important problems. I want a world where the conversation of science is conducted in indexible, searchable, linkable, accessible, and modifiable public media. As lovely of an idea as that is, someone has to write the backend, design the front-end…
There are nearly 7 billion people in the world. I think between us we can manage to read more than 1.5 papers a week.
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>I want a world where the scientific enterprise grows beyond academia. I want a world where the collective intelligence of humanity can be brought to bear on humanity's most important problems. I want a world where the conversation of science is conducted in indexible, searchable, linkable, accessible, and modifiable public media. As lovely of an idea as that is, someone has to write the backend, design the front-end…
Wasn't the whole thing that they allowed free unrestricted access to the JSTOR database from MIT IP addresses? All Aaron Swartz did was jack into an Ethernet port in a closet that was unlocked in an MIT building, and get an IP address from an unsecured network at MIT, and then wrote some Python scripts to work as a web robot and pull down articles. The web robot did the same thing as any user at MIT could do, read an…
I'm not talking about hosting or downloading. I'm talking about the digitization of documents and to pay the salaries of their ~200 staff.
I can't help but be reminded of the MPAA/RIAA vs. John Doe lawsuits that were commonplace just a couple years ago. It's sad that our legal system lacks a sense of proportionality for crimes. 35 years is what someone would get for murder, rape, or dealing drugs - not for stealing property, and then giving it back. I hope that the US government takes time to reflect on how they mishandled the case. At least then something good will come of his death.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want a world where the scientific enterprise grows beyond academia. I want a world where the collective intelligence of humanity can be brought to bear on humanity's most important problems. I want a world where the conversation of science is conducted in indexible, searchable, linkable, accessible, and modifiable public media. Is JSTOR a friend or an enemy of my vision? Three articles every two weeks - sounds like…
>I want a world where the scientific enterprise grows beyond academia. I want a world where the collective intelligence of humanity can be brought to bear on humanity's most important problems. I want a world where the conversation of science is conducted in indexible, searchable, linkable, accessible, and modifiable public media. As lovely of an idea as that is, someone has to write the backend, design the front-end…
No problem - as all the open-access publications and archives in the world will attest (PLoS, arxiv). Give us the access and get out of our way. You will be amazed at the ingenuity of free people.
>"How often do you read JSTOR articles? Personally, I don't power through a math paper in a single day, but maybe you're brilliant."
When I was in grad school, I would skim dozens of articles to find a few that I wanted to read deeply. The way that we use open information is qualitatively different than rate-limited information. It's just not the same.