From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 12:19:07 -0600

Clearly, Klaus and I have different ideas about what is ethical. To my
way of thinking, one obeys the laws of the jurisdiction one lives in,
unless one feels very strongly that they are wrong, in which event one
then protests in any number of ways that range from political lobbying
to get new people elected to change the laws up to civil disobedience,
which to be effective requires one to openly challenge the laws by
disobeying them in public and accepting the legal consequences. Aaron
Swartz is not a role model in this respect. He conducted his illegal
activity in secret and then challenged the punishment.

People who think it is ok to ignore contracts they have signed and
flout copyright law need to ask themselves what kind of behavior they
are modeling for their students. Cheating is apparently a major
problem in colleges still. On what moral ground does a teacher have to
stand in combating copyright infringement by students if the teachers
themselves are ignoring the law? There is a slippery slope here too.
Can any teachers who act in this manner then complain when a student,
as at a university in Florida, opening encourages his fellow students
to get their textbooks free from pirate sites instead of buying them
in the bookstore? Even Peggy Hoon will admit, I'm confident, that the
publishers' investment of value added in textbooks is substantial, far
beyond what it is in journal publishing. And can these teachers
complain when their grad students get their monographs from pirate
sites also, instead of buying them from university presses, which will
be less able then to publish these same teachers' own monographs in
the future?

If you are championing Academia.edu, then you are effectively saying
that it's ok for companies to steal others' IP to build their
businesses.

I would urge you all to look beyond your immediate self-interests and
see what you are possibly contributing to the erosion of the morality
of higher education in general. It's one thing to be a supporter of
OA, as I have been for two decades; it's another thing to encourage
lawbreaking. Those who do, like the owners of Grokster, will get their
just deserts sooner or later.

Sandy Thatcher


> 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