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