From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 04:32:00 +0000 >Am I the only librarian who's troubled by "the devil made me do it" >argument that a number of library people are advancing here (the devil >in this case being the publisher(s))? No. Unfortunately, the rhetorical environment has become so Manichean at this point that anyone who publicly expresses such reservations runs the risk of being characterized as an enemy of openness and sharing. I think that’s why so few librarians are willing to speak up. (Unfortunately, I think it’s also true that some of our colleagues in the profession are quietly delighted by Sci-Hub and see Alexandra Elbakyan as a Robin Hood figure.) >Do we as librarians really believe that large-scale copyright >infringement is a good thing, that it's right, and a means to a better >future? That’s a good question, and there’s another one I would add: do we really believe that conducting phishing campaigns to trick unwary faculty members into disclosing their network authentication credentials is a legitimate means to the end of providing free access to scholarly and scientific publications? (See http://chronicle.com/article/Librarians-Find-Themselves/235353.) Some will probably respond that it’s silly to suggest that such campaigns are worth discussing — after all, how big a problem can it be when only a complete idiot would give his or her login credentials to someone pretending to be a network administrator? Are we saying that our faculty are idiots? Raising such concerns is clearly just fear-mongering on the part of OA’s enemies. --- Rick Anderson Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication Marriott Library, University of Utah [log in to unmask]