File-sharing: not just for kids

I'm still wrapping my head around this; it's a report about a bunch of medical professionals setting up a file-sharing forum for articles from non-open access (NOA) journals. Techdirt reports that the site had 100,000 users and that 83% of requested articles were shared—over 5000 articles in a 6-month period. I went to look at the original report and saw a lot of talk about OA vs. NOA journals, but, interestingly, no discussion of institutional repositories. I would love to see an analysis of how many of those articles, despite being published in NOA journals, were freely available online, to begin with.

More broadly, though, this seems like some sort of failure, on some level, by someone. Does the blame fall on publishers for charging too much? (Unsurprisingly, I'm inclined to suggest that's a piece of the problem, yes. The study gives the average "value"—I'm going to use the term "cost," instead—of an article as $30. Seems a bit steep, to me, given that the writing and editing were done for free, from the publisher's standpoint.) Does the fault lie with libraries for failing to make interlibrary loan into a faster, better-used, better-marketed service? Maybe, but, then again, with this kind of volume, mightn't libraries be running into cost and copyright pitfalls, anyway? I'll show some ignorance, here: perhaps public libraries don't offer article-level ILLs; I admit, I've never tried. On the other hand, it's hard to say how many of these researchers already had access to academic or medical libraries that could get these articles for them and opted to go this route, anyway; I would assume a very small percentage, but what if I'm wrong? Do we blame institutions—and, yeah, academic libraries—for failing to build repositories of their scholars' works? Maybe, a little, but a fair portion of the publishers in the biomedical fields seem (by my unscientific sampling) to insist on pre-print only archiving, as well as 6-month to 1-year embargoes. That's a non-ideal scenario, even with 100% participation in institutional repositories, which is, itself, a pipe dream.

I thought this quote, from the original study, was pretty fascinating: "From the participants’ comments made in the forums, however, there does not appear to be any vindictiveness on the part of the participants against the journals or holders of copyright, but a mood of togetherness, of openness and sharing, and communal assistance." So, scientists acting like scientists are supposed to, sharing information freely? The devil, you say!

I don't have any new solutions to offer—that I think social networking tools could make some of this discussion moot is probably no secret [though it may be worth its own post, later in the week]—so perhaps I shouldn't go so far as to say this: journal publishers are now, more and more obviously, getting in the way of scientific progress. Perhaps not as directly as stupid intellectual property policies—companies owning genes and chemical formulas and the like—but, certainly, it's happening. Scientific discussion should be open and accessible, and as libraries struggle with decreasing budgets, while publishers increase the price of journals, that discussion is getting more and more closed, forcing researchers to, in this case, build their own file-sharing networks, to get the information they need. This is a pressing issue for the library, scientific, and academic communities—which, I realize, overlap significantly, though I would argue that sometimes scientists-as-scientists are open to different solutions than scientists-as-academics: the bulk of my favored options require some changes in the tenure system, for instance.

At any rate, have a look at that study, and tell me what you think in the comments. (Maybe one day I'll get Google Wave working with this blog, and we can chat about all of this in real-time.)

A little essay I cooked up

I've been pretty bad about posting my class essays up here, for a number of reasons. One of the big ones is that they are so specific to the questions, and I make kind of lazy references to books that I don't expect everyone on my blogroll to have read. (Let's be honest--I haven't read all of them. Four books in a week? Really? With a full course schedule and a part-time job? Hah, right.)

In this case, I just use articles, most of which are worth your time to check out, and for good measure [and because I refer directly to it], I am going to post the question, as well. It's still a little cramped, I think, because I had to get it in under 275 words (it's 271). Anyway, enjoy. And comment. And let's discuss. (And sorry for a second post in a day!) And, yes, you could argue that I ignored half the question, but I am actually pretty comfortable with that; knowing my professor, I suspect most of the question was a red herring.

Question:
In the United States, copyright law promotes the public good and protects the exclusive limited rights of copyright holders, in that order. If the copyright law fails to protect the rights of copyright holders adequately, how is the public good affected? Would it be better or worse if the United States adopted the standard for copyright protection in the rest of the industrialized world, whereby the primary purpose of such statutes is to protect the rights and interests of copyright holders?

Answer:
I believe the change referred to in the last sentence is already occurring--and has been for twenty years. Copyright law was written to prevent corporations from reproducing works without permission--something they had the tools to do--in the interest of encouraging innovation by making it profitable. However, the advent of consumer technologies that could make copies, then the Internet, has effectively put the same tools into the hands of individuals, making copyright law into a seriously flawed and poorly patched joke (Lessig). In 1982 Jack Valenti, a lobbyist for the film industry, compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler in front of Congress (Frel and michael). Clearly, this comparison is overblown; in fact, the film industry saw gains from this technology; it makes over $25 billion per year from videotapes and DVDs now (Frel).

Nevertheless, the same logic continues to stream out from their lobbyists, leading most recently to the PRO-IP Act, which "relaxes the standards under which extended prison terms of up to ten years can be given to repeat felony copyright infringers" (Ehmke). Just for comparison, the minimum prison term for rape in Pennsylvania is 4 years (McGill); yes, one could serve more time for copying a CD than for brutally attacking another person. I fail to see how this is "in the public interest."

I'm out of words but have much more to say. So, I would like to point you to an article by Cory Doctorow, which claims that what is at stake in the fight against draconian IP laws is nothing less than our culture itself: http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/11/cory-doctorow-why-i-copyfight.html. Please give it a read. He's right.

Works cited:

Ehmke, A. "Pro-IP Act Signed into Law." Haynes and Boone's News Room. Posted October 15, 2008. Available online: http://www.haynesboone.com/pro-ip-act-signed-into-law-10-15-2008/ Accessed November 20, 2008.

Frel, J. "The Revolution Will Be Downloaded." AlterNet. Posted April 20, 2005. Available online: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21817/. Accessed Nov 20, 2008.

Lessig, Lawrence. Speech: "The Internet at the Crossroads." The Politics of Code - Shaping the Future of the Next Internet, Oxford Internet Institute, 2003.

McGill, A. "Cluck sentenced to four years in prison." The Daily Collegian Online. Posted August 23, 2007. Available online: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2007/08/23/cluck_sentenced_to_four_years.aspx Accessed November 20, 2008.

michael. "Valenti's "Boston Strangler" Testimony." Slashdot. Posted on Fri May 31, 2002 03:12 PM. Available online: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/31/1622232.

West, J. "little pieces of things that might interest you." librarian.net. Posted November 20, 2008. Available online: http://www.librarian.net/stax/2561/little-pieces-of-things-that-might-interest-you/

A quote I ran into while I was looking for best practices on citing Slashdot (which is something I do tend to avoid): "... citing slashdot on patent issues is like citing Soviet propaganda to find out about the US Constitution." --FallLine, , posted to Slashdot on Monday January 15 2007.