From: Subbiah Arunachalam <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2017 15:43:38 +0530

"When a law is unjust, it is only right to disobey," said Mahatma
Gandhi, the great apostle of Ahimsa and Peace. Reading all the
discussion on Elsevier vs. Elbakyan, this sentence crossed my mind.

I would also like to draw attention to an article entitled "Heads I
Win, Tails You Lose: The Intransigence of STM Publishers" a colleague
and I wrote more than two years ago:

<http://www.insa.nic.in/writereaddata/UpLoadedFiles/PINSA/Vol80_2014_5_Art04.pdf>.

Arun



On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 1:21 AM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: "Smith, Kevin L" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 12:57:46 +0000
>
> I don't think you are being fair, Joe; David is asking a legitimate question, although it is also true that he is pointing out some boilerplate rhetoric that actually does not, and is not intended, to have much meaning.
>
> Your argument that all law must be obeyed lest our social institutions be undermined is very similar, in my mind, to those who say that we must crack down on all undocumented residents in the U.S. simply because they are "illegal."  But the law has not always been the same as it is now, and it could be changed.  We could be more generous, legally, to undocumented aliens, as we once were, and we could be more generous to users of copyrighted content, as we once were.
>
> As to David's question, surely we can ask if users of scientific articles are better off because they have more avenues of access to scholarship? If we determine that they are, perhaps the laws, or the norms of how scholarship is disseminated, should change.  If scholars did not give their copyrights away, Sci-Hub might not be illegal, depending on how articles were licensed.  Rather than simply asserting that what is good for Elsevier is good for scholarship, Sci-Hub, as well as other developments in the scholarly communications ecosphere, challenge us to reconsider the system as a whole, and what changes might make it better.
>
> Just to be clear, I don't want Elsevier to fail, nor do I want to do away with copyright.  But I would like Elsevier to have a much less dominant say in how scholars work, and I would like copyright to be a benefit to authors, rather than an obstacle to them after it has been given away.  David's questions points us toward those kinds of consideration, IMO.
>
> Kevin
>
> Kevin L. Smith, J.D.
> Dean of Libraries
> University of Kansas