On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 7:40 PM, Ted Smith
... I think that if you are uncomfortable with taking direct action to liberate scientific knowledge, you can still be a valuable participant....
A direct action with a sterilized scalpel instead of a shotgun is still a direct action.
However, I feel that it's wrong to condemn those who are willing to take those risks....
I'm not condemning people willing to participate in civil disobedience, and I have done so myself on multiple occasions. But the document as it stands urges a criminal conspiracy in a way that could ensnare people even tangentially involved without disclosing the risks in a way that we could say that they would be making an informed decision to risk persecution. Any person would be more condemned by the possibility of a felony arrest, conviction, and prison term than the requirement to consider improving Wikipedia.
So to conclude: you've presented a good idea, and I will support you if you are persecuted for using it....
Nobody is likely to be persecuted for using the US fair use exemptions allowing people to share copyrighted documents when they are collaborating on established publications. It's airtight in centuries of case law and explicit codification. Perhaps we should be asking if there is a safe yet massive synthesis between the Cookbook thesis and Wikipedia:Resource_exchange antithesis here: 1. What collaboration projects would require the fair use of massive collections of closed scientific documents? 2. Would compiling a version of http://books.google.com/ngrams based on academic journal publications qualify? 3. Can we organize to do that under a limited liability structure to insure that nobody gets sent to jail trying? 4. Does someone know a lawyer willing to answer these questions? E.g., Lessig? Zittrain? EFFers?
(I also don't see how the Global South plays into this, and am not sure why you mention it.)
Please see Aaron Swartz's July 2008 Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto ("Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? Itbs outrageous and unacceptable.") -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "science-liberation-front" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to science-liberation-front+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE