Nick on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:07:13 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Aaron Swartz charged for downloading too many Journal articles from the Library: Please sign suport petition.


I've never understood how jstor can claim to limit access to journal
articles. Aren't they publically funded? Even if not, charging huge
fees (and in so doing stopping access from the vast majority who
aren't affiliated with a university) for works created (one hopes)
for the purposes of sharing knowledge, and without any payment to the
author, seems so obviously poisonous it's shocking there isn't louder
dissent (or maybe I just haven't had my ear to the right places).

Regardless of whether it's the US Government or Jstor who are
punishing him (though admittedly I don't understand the reasoning
allowing government involvement; this is after all surely a civil
issue, not a criminal one, legally), the fault lies with jstor for
defaulting to 'locking the articles away' in the first place.

/me wonders how difficult it is to bypass the access
    restrictions of jstor...







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