From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2017 06:20:32 -0500

Listening to some friends rail about the iniquities of the NY Times
(their position being that the Times's reporting during the U.S.
presidential campaign was so dreadfully biased against Bernie Sanders
that is cost Sanders his "rightful" victory of the Democratic
nomination and hence of the presidency), I said: You will miss the NY
Times when it is gone. As for observing laws we do not like, we will
miss not these specific laws but law itself when it is gone.

Advocating criticism and change is a right and responsibility.
Undermining the legitimacy of institutions is a dangerous business. I
find Kevin Smith's comment and David Prosser's follow-on remark to be
lacking in moral seriousness. The fact that "the other side" is
populated by hoodlums and jerks is irrelevant.

Joe Esposito


On Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 2:51 PM, 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
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE
> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2017 9:54 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: US Court grants Elsevier millions in damages fro Sci-Hub
>
> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:49:15 -0400
>
> Is the point that you are just sticking a hole in the rhetoric or are you seriously suggesting that anyone benefits from illegal activity?
> If you are just noting that the rhetoric belongs to the genre of stupid pontificating, I will remind you that if you want to clean up that mess, you will need an army and several centuries. But if the underlying issue is not important--that breaches of the law undermine our social institutions--then this is a more serious discussion than access to scholarly material. I really don't think it's wise to be cute about this.
>
> Joe Esposito
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 10:48 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2017 09:51:40 +0000
> >
> > Reading the Nature article I see:
> >
> > "The defendants’ “unlawful activities have caused and will continue to
> > cause irreparable injury to Elsevier, its customers and the public,”
> > Elsevier’s New York-based attorneys, DeVore & DeMarco, told the
> > court."
> >
> > I can understand how one might make a case for harm to the publisher
> > (although proving it might be tricky) - but I’m struggling to think
> > what the case might be for harm to customers and the public. Am I
> > missing something obvious?
> >
> > David