http://www.structuralknowledge.com/2011/07/19/stealing-ideas/
Kevin Webb reflects on Aaron Swartz's indictment for downloading thousands of copyrighted scholarly publications from a server closet at MIT. Here's a key part of the article:
"But this leads to the second and perhaps more fundamental problem: journals are only partly about communicating. They're also about controlling academic discourse. The editorial power held by journals and those that run them (quite different from those that own them) shapes most academic careers and the very structure of disciplines. It's almost certain that pursuing new forms of collaboration and communication will reshape these power structures–sometimes subtly, sometimes not. That's the nature of change.
Change, however, doesn't come easily within academic communities. It should be no surprise that universities have done far more to free the content of their courses than they have the content of their publications. The former has economic value, however, the latter holds the keys to the academy itself.
This conservatism is at least in part responsible for why, despite the new possibilities offered by the web, most scholarly work is still published as though it were 1580. It's also responsible for allowing a handful of powerful corporations to gate access to this knowledge and make authors pay for the privilege of signing away rights to their own work."
Kevin Webb reflects on Aaron Swartz's indictment for downloading thousands of copyrighted scholarly publications from a server closet at MIT. Here's a key part of the article:
"But this leads to the second and perhaps more fundamental problem: journals are only partly about communicating. They're also about controlling academic discourse. The editorial power held by journals and those that run them (quite different from those that own them) shapes most academic careers and the very structure of disciplines. It's almost certain that pursuing new forms of collaboration and communication will reshape these power structures–sometimes subtly, sometimes not. That's the nature of change.
Change, however, doesn't come easily within academic communities. It should be no surprise that universities have done far more to free the content of their courses than they have the content of their publications. The former has economic value, however, the latter holds the keys to the academy itself.
This conservatism is at least in part responsible for why, despite the new possibilities offered by the web, most scholarly work is still published as though it were 1580. It's also responsible for allowing a handful of powerful corporations to gate access to this knowledge and make authors pay for the privilege of signing away rights to their own work."