 |
 |
 |
|
Re: Wednesday, May 9, 2007
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.
|
