Almost 20,000 articles previously behind a pay-wall have been posted on Piratebay in protest at academic publishing.
I've written about the problems of academic publishing before, and lots of users have asked for access on here to paywall articles. Conveniently, someone has uploaded a torrent with 18,592 scientific articles to PirateBay.org, "in what appears to be a protest directed both at the recent indictment of programmer Aaron Swartz for data theft as well as the scientific publishing model in general."
Comments
This is very good news - I'll
This is very good news - I'll have to see if there's anything I can use.
Yeah, this is great. Good on
Yeah, this is great. Good on the guy.
He has done it with his real name as well so that the bloke already arrested for this wasn't blamed for it.
It's outrageous that this copyright-free material, much of which is publicly funded research, is unavailable to the public without paying exorbitant fees.
Wellcome Trust have just
Wellcome Trust have just joined the voices wanting open and free access to publicly funded research. Apparently they're setting up a new free science journal called eLife, and are aiming to compete with the likes of Nature and Science but theirs will be freely available to the public
Very depressing to read the
Very depressing to read the news that Aaron Swartz took his own life on Friday.
"The family of celebrated internet activist Aaron Swartz has accused prosecutors and MIT officials of being complicit in his death, blaming the apparent suicide on the pursuit of a young man over "an alleged crime that had no victims".
In a statement released late Saturday, Swartz's parents, Robert and Susan, siblings Noah and Ben and partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman said the Redditt builder's demise was not just a "personal tragedy" but "the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach".
They also attacked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for not supporting the internet activist in his legal battles and refusing to stand up for "its own community's most cherished principles".
The comments came a day after the 26-year-old killed himself in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday night."
After government increased
After government increased the number of felony counts against him from 4 to 13, he was looking at 35 years in prison and a fine up to $1 million.
The register have a decent article about how this is basically a case of a politically motivated activist hounded to his death, and the growign collective anger :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/13/anger_death_aaron_swartz/
On the positive side, his death has sparked spontaneous collective direct action by academics who are tweeting links where their papers can be downloaded in breach of copyright (#pdftribute).
http://neuroconscience.com/2013/01/13/researchers-begin-posting-article-pdfs-to-twitter-in-pdftribute-to-aaron-swartz/
Cheers for that, hadn't seen
Cheers for that, hadn't seen the pdftribute thing!
This is unbelievably sad
This is unbelievably sad news.. poor guy, poor family.. :(
came across this, from
came across this, from 2008:
Aaron Swartz
This is really sad news...
This is really sad news...