Internet censorship

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Internet censorship

Other than perhaps my very early years of teaching, I don't think I have required students to buy any books. That is just criminal. More specifically, I have never insisted they have some specific edition since when a new edition comes out the older editions can be had for dirt dirt cheap.

When I was a student myself, I bought only the very fundamental books that I wanted to keep and the rest, I always managed to somehow find ways around having them (it also helped that I almost never read any of my books -- but that was probably more of being in the CS fields).

Now back to JSTOR, the publishers have the rights to the articles I think. The authors (academics), freely give them that right when they submit their papers to whatever journal of conference they are submitting to. You always have to sign some copyright release form. At that point, the publisher can do whatever the hell they want. It is completely irrelevant how much money changes hands and what costs what where ... if you don't have permission to download and share things the way the publishers and JSTOR see fit, you are simply doing WRONG. There is no such thing as "Freedom of Information" when copyright is concerned. The authors have given up their rights.

If you want to argue copyright law, that of course is a whole different thread. But here, it sounds like you are saying this kid was justified in his theft just because it was "simple" (as in save-as"), or "free" (as in well MIT had the license), or some other excuse.

What remains is that this guy took the easy way out every time ... for the articles, instead of fighting the laws and ownership (for example Google was in litigation for YEARS with book publishers in trying to make a crap load of books available for free to the public), he just took the easy way and decided to download things that didn't belong to him and <allegedly> "share".

When it came time to face consequences, which would very likely have been slaps on his wrist (I really really doubt he would have seen much prison time), what did he do? Yah he took the easy way out again.

My conclusion: you have never used JSTOR, and you do not understand copyright laws or the purpose of academic publications.

And you think there should be only one library in the world (and it should be in America, of course) because that library has copyrighted the concept of a library and so anyone else who tries to emulate it by creating another library is committing a crime by copying the concept and having the same books.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Internet censorship

Doesn't JSTOR work as a search engine really? Like what's searchable through JSTOR includes more publications than are full-text and points you to the publishers website to purchase the full-text. As for those that are available in full-text; doesn't that depend entirely on the subscriptions of the institution utilizing JSTOR? Or am I missing something because my experience with this has been only in an academic setting? I have hit "save as" a lot... no one's come after me. Why? I didn't then turn around and try to distribute what I downloaded. You have permission to the full-text when your institution subscribes -- we do pay university/library fees that pay for this stuff. What we don't have a right to do is then take that article, access through EBSCO, LEXIS, JSTOR, etc. and then distribute it to others for purposes other than intended (Obviously a professor distributing an article to their class for the purposes of teaching is another story).

It's like buying a book -- you buy a copy of it not the rights to work. You can't then buy a printing press and start making your own copies to distribute. It doesn't matter if you bought the book, received it as a gift, picked it up at a garage sale, found in a trash bin, etc.

The institute pays for access to all of JSTOR, the institute does not pay for anything that is downloaded and does not retain anything that is downloaded. The downloader does not need to even physically be using the institute's computer network - if the institute allows it you can access JSTOR from home using your own computer and the institute's account. Who the institute allows to access their account is up to the institute to decide.

Every article has a JSTOR cover page. I don't know if the cover page varies according to the country into which it is being downloaded but the usage terms on those I have match the "fair use" part of copyright law in Britain, i.e. if the article you want to download is still in copyright then, as long as it is for personal and non commercial use, you can download and retain the article but you should not download the entire issue of the periodical or journal containing the article. In this it differs from UK copyright law - normally copying up to 10% of a publication is considered "fair use" - anything more isn't. A lot of what is on JSTOR is out of copyright anyway. JSTOR does not hold a copyright on the concept of an online library.

If JSTOR puts the same cover page on articles downloaded in America then in many cases it is expressing rights that it does not legally have. For example, for articles on JSTOR I've downloaded in the UK, it places the same usage restrictions on articles published in the 1880s as those from the 1980s. However, JSTOR would has no legal right in US law to enforce such restrictions. Wikipedia is able to use digital copies of out of copyright items (mostly digital images of artworks) - the fact that Wikipedia did not create any of those digital images and that Wikipedia stole them (under UK and EU copyright laws) from their creators (from the websites and digital collections of European museums and galleries) still does not mean that Wikipedia broke US laws. Under US copyright law the creator of a copy of an object that is not itself protected by copyright has no legal rights to restrict the use of that copy.

However, this is all a big red herring created by Sip - Aaron Swartz was not being prosecuted by the Government of the United States for breaking copyright laws, nothing he downloaded was redistributed, and no authors or publications or publishers were involved.

[bell-the-cat]

Re: Internet censorship

It is exactly the same thing. Are you saying JSTOR does not have legal right to the content they have? I guess I don't understand what your problem is here. If JSTOR didn't have legal right to the content they have, why was this kid in legal trouble?

For the same reason that you would have legal trouble if you had been opposing proposed oppressive laws and had been exposing to ridicule those supporting the proposed laws and when out off-roading in that jeep thingy you have as your avatar you shouted out "I'm gonna nuke those big red rocks" and then found yourself charged with being a terrorist.

[Siggie]

Re: Internet censorship

Bell, I'm not specifically familiar with JSTOR, but that is certainly not how other such databases work (ebsco, psychinfo, or whatever else... I've only used scholar for the last 5 or so years...) The institutions subscribe to journals or collections of journals and those are the ones available full-text. I know this because I have had access through different organizations at the same time and had some journals in full-text through one account and not the other.

If JSTOR didn't have right to distribute that way it would be in suit right now.
The reason why it probably has that coverage is legal protection for itself-- it has publishers permission for narrow use and it's informing the user of the permitted use.

[Sip]

Re: Internet censorship

However, this is all a big red herring created by Sip - Aaron Swartz was not being prosecuted by the Government of the United States for breaking copyright laws, nothing he downloaded was redistributed, and no authors or publications or publishers were involved.

MY red herring? The thread title is implying this whole thing is about censorship. Which it is not. I am not defending the US government actions nor do I think copyright laws are very good (I don't know much about EU as most of what we deal with in the US is the DMCA disaster). Are you trying to stretch the EU fair use case to a single person downloading the ENITRE JSTOR ... for what? You want to make the case that it was for personal use? Come on ... it was clearly to redistribute. I couldn't care less if he spent the rest of his adult life reading JSTOR articles he downloaded from MIT.

[Sip]

Re: Internet censorship

... you do not understand ... the purpose of academic publications.

That part you definitely got right There is sooooooooooooo much garbage published on a daily basis, I have very often wondered what the purpose really is here.

[Siggie]

Re: Internet censorship

That part you definitely got right There is sooooooooooooo much garbage published on a daily basis, I have very often wondered what the purpose really is here.

Tenure?

[Sip]

Re: Internet censorship

Tenure?

One could even argue that "libraries" like JSTOR actually do humanity a big service by helping filter the "academic" garbage from further consumption.

And Bell, before you demand another apology, I am kidding