Posted by
Steve Smith on
Apr 19, 2013; 5:09pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/digital-ethics-tp7582823p7582850.html
Roger -
> It's okay Glen, those results are high in the search because they're
> useful to people who search. The publisher is using the police powers
> of our government to enforce its monopoly on the book, but has chosen
> to limit its marketing efforts to the richest people in the world and
> told the rest to go f*** themselves. Us middle class semi eggheads
> are willing to pay $100/copy and we're easy to find because we all
> live together.
>
> What you're seeing is a new piece of common law being established.
>
> If a trademark holder does not defend a trademark by action in the
> marketplace, it loses it.
> If a patent holder does not market a patented drug which could save
> lives, it loses the patent.
> If a publisher fails to make its copyrighted works available, it loses
> the copyright.
>
> These virtual property rights do not include the right to hoard, you
> have to exercise the right if you want to keep it.
I am sympathetic with your argument here. I do believe that in fact "a
new piece of common law is being" *searched for* and ultimately will be
established.
As an egghead with a few bucks, I am happy to find when authors provide
a PDF of their peer-reviewed, published paper on their professional or
personal website (is this common law or a literal option acknowledged by
all journal publishers or ???). But I am also happy to subscribe to the
journals which are central to my own field... sadly in my case, I'm
enough "all over the place" that this is prohibitive. So I settle for
what I feel I can afford... and the ones I respect or identify with
most. If I had an employer I would expect/hope/request that *they*
support these publication efforts on my behalf as part of my
professional environment.
I think the argument you are making is an important one with huge, wide
reaching implications. Before the Internet, it was moot as to whether a
self-starting tech entrepreneur in Nepal or Sudan or the Seychelles
wanted access to a particular article out of SPIE Optics as she would
never even know it existed. Now she does, she wants it, and some of us
would say either A) She deserves it or B) we *want* her to have that
access.
I think there *is* a class war afoot, and I don't mean that in the
snotty dismissive way the self-righteous right uses the term. And yes,
the publishers or the drug company or the megaMart consumer-productizers
are *still* making record revenues despite a presumed worldwide
recession, etc. But many of us middle-class eggheads (or not eggheads)
are likely sitting on a pension fund or a 401k or an IRA that *depends*
on those people continuing to get rich. They is us (to a limited extent).
I don't think this undermines your argument, but I hope it refines it.
What ARE the commons, and how do we transition from one mode of managing
the commons to another without washing the babies down the acequia with
the heads of the Patrons who yesterday said they *owned* the acequias?
- Steve
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