From: Klaus Graf <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2013 03:20:51 +0100

1) No one has the right to expropriate scholars concerning their own work.

2) These copyright transfer agreements are therefore in moral terms illegal.

3) For German law it isn't tested by courts if such agreements are
vaild Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen. I doubt this.

4) No scholar should work for (as author, reviewer, editor) for
Elsevier and other companies using such take down notices. I have
signed the Elsevier boycott.

http://thecostofknowledge.com/

5) Academia.edu is more attractive for humanities scholars than the
boring Harnadian style IRs which give the users stones instead of
bread, i.e. shameless dark deposits (with ridiculous eprint button) or
final draft versions humantity scholars are not willing to quote.

6) Breaking copyright transfers and self-archiving ALL is the best
tribute (#pdftribute) in memory of the late Aaron Swartz.

7) Driving people who are dreaming of free and open science to suicide
has nothing to do with ethical behaviour.

Klaus Graf


2013/12/9 LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]>

> From: "Pikas, Christina K." <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2013 09:49:22 -0500
>
> At the risk of coming off as an Elsevier defender.... I'd like to make
> some points in response:
>
> 1) Academia.edu is a private company running on venture capital -
> presumably they aspire to make money on the content that users upload
>
> 2) Authors signed a legal agreement with the publisher to transfer
> copyright. (many would argue that they shouldn't have, but they did,
> or they wouldn't have been published)
>
> 3) The agreement they signed allowed them to put some version on their
> own page or in their institutional repository - not to give to a
> company with the license that the company could make it available for
> any and all users to download
>
> 4) When these authors joined Academia.edu, they had to agree to the
> terms of service here: http://www.academia.edu/terms . Uploading
> things for which you do not have the copyright is against the terms.
> It's listed in the General Prohibitions.
>
> Too bad they got caught. I'm not sure why Elsevier waited so long, but
> probably they mulled over the risk of letting this pass and decided it
> was too big. I am curious what will happen with the content on
> Mendeley.
>
> This is only my opinion (NAL) and does not reflect anything my
> employer or school have to say about anything.
>
> Christina Pikas