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There's some remedial activity by the Free Culture movement...
See this mailing list discussion on the Free Thesis project:
http://freeculture.org/pipermail/discuss/2007-May/date.html#start
I'll paste my contributions below given I own the copyright (tho wish it abolished):
Universities are supposedly for the discovery and dissemination of knowledge
- for the benefit of mankind.
Inevitable funding squeezes inspire the conversion of this knowledge into IP
protected by copyright and patent for commercial exploitation. This can
interfere with 'dissemination'.
Anything that removes such intellectual monopolies from knowledge and
facilitates its dissemination to the public is going to be good for mankind.
If the 'Free Thesis Project' moves in this direction to any extent, it is
good. If that extent is insignificant (simply facilitates privileged access
by student and faculty subscribers), then it's disappointing.
'Free' is supposed to be about unshackling the public and removing their
barriers to access knowledge/art and build upon it, not simply making things
free (of charge) and easy for the privileged.
Any scholar who has a web site and deliberately provides only abstracts to
their papers rather than the full text (only available to
'members/subscribers'), is demonstrating a lack of philanthropy and
intellect that can be presumed similarly lacking in their paper.
A scholar who self-publishes their paper in full, but uses copyright
(however licensed) to prohibit wider dissemination and restrict the liberty
of other scholars to build upon their work, could do better.
Let your fellow men stand upon your shoulders so that we may all see
further.
Of potential relevance are Google's facilities in this area:
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/publishers.html
> From: rob at robmyers.org
> Well they may be restricted by publication requirements or college
> policy. But if not then this is indefensible.
It's indefensible ANYWAY. It's indefensible for a university to interfere
with the ability of its students to disseminate their discoveries,
creations, research, and knowledge to the public (their peers today and
tomorrow).
It used to be the case that the university had a hard time trying to
persuade students to PUBLISH their discoveries and knowledge for the benefit
of mankind rather than to hoard them for themselves.
And now we find that the universities have become corrupted to hoard their
students' work in precisely the way they had previously admonished*.
It's bad enough that students are overly policed in their exploration and
exchange of popular culture, but when they are even policed against
publishing their own work, then this is tantamount to indentured employment.
Time for students to assert (not merely plead for) ownership of their own
work sufficient to dedicate it to the public.
* It may once have been the case that a university felt it had to
confiscate the commercial privileges that copyright and patent might grant
to students - in order to ensure the student didn't, in the process of
exploiting them, impair the dissemination of their work. Unfortunately, it
seems that universities have inevitably corrupted this philanthropic motive
into a selfish one - the more wealthy the university, the more economically
self-sufficient it becomes (through commercial exploitation of its scholars'
and students' work), presumably it argues, the better its contribution to
science and the arts?
>From: Fred Benenson
>The point is, it's counterproductive to start shouting about how
>corrupted the university's intentions and policies are when we're not
>really discussing specifics.
I'd suggest that issues are easier to understand and communicate if you
polarise the argument away from esoteric subtleties.
I'd use the term 'emphasis' rather than 'shouting', but I do aspire to being
productive in my posts. :)
>I get wary once we start arguing that we should override thoughtful
>decisions for the sake of our own ideology.
It's a matter of first deciding whether universities are self-sufficient
commercial enterprises with employee subsidised tuition one of many
services, and academic certificates one of many products, or whether they
are philanthropic centres of learning, research and development.
Only in the latter case could we persuade reform of their IP policies to
deliver their IP unencumbered to the public. It is not enough simply to
withold copyright and patent from the student, the liberties must be
restored to the public.
Free culture is not about empowering the student author in their claim to
copyright and use thereof (that's a Creative Commons mission), it's about
restoring the liberty of the public (including granting the public access to
work supposedly created for their benefit).
So, here, I'm only suggesting that students should at least be empowered to
dedicate their work to the public, and restore the liberty of the public to
use, share, study, and build upon their work.
Enabling the student to enjoy a monopoly on the commercial exploitation of
their work, is not a function of universities, and nor should it be. They
may be supported in their attempts to assert this.
However, the university should become custodian of these monopolies only in
order to nullify them - not to exploit them.
The moment the university falls short of this, or worse, enjoys their
commercial benefit, is the moment the philanthropic student has just cause
to usurp responsibility for restoring the public's liberty - to at least the
work the student produced.
discuss
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