Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to the Pirate Bay (here be brainy booty, arrrhhh)

[TalkingDog]

"All Your (Data)Base Are Belong to Us"

http://gigaom.com/2011/07/21/pirate-bay-jstor/

A user called Greg Maxwell just uploaded a torrent with 18,592 scientific publications to the Pirate Bay, 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. All the documents of the 32-gigabyte torrent were taken from JSTOR, the academic database that’s at the center of the case against Swartz.

The torrent consists of documents from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the copyright to which has long since expired. However, the only way to access these documents until now has been via JSTOR, as Maxwell explains in a long and eloquent text on the Pirate Bay, with individual articles costing as much as $19. “Purchasing access to this collection one article at a time would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he writes.

[piratefish08]

1. technology may bring about the next revolution.

the laptop peasants are rising up!

[TalkingDog]

2. Woot!

Information is power. Power to the people.

[Xithras]

3. Good for him.

Free Aaron Swartz. His prosecution is a brilliant demonstration of the fascistic nature of American government.

"We don't care that you didn't hurt anyone and gave away something that was already free...you broke a RULE and must have your life destroyed because of it."

[bainz]

4. Do you support taking public domain works from libraries? n/t

[TalkingDog]

6. Google does.

Public Domain means we all own it. WE own it. Public. Domain.

[Luminous Animal]

7. People do it everyday. For free.

[Xithras]

8. Yes. Why not?

It's not as if he took a physical publication. He made digital copies of public domain documents (and public domain means that they are free of copyright restrictions) that were offered via a computer system accessible to anyone on campus. The university itself declined to pursue the matter, stating that they hadn't lost anything, and that he hadn't infringed on any of their copyrights.

In what kind of "free country" can that be a crime?!?!

According to the federal prosecutors office...this one.

[Posteritatis]

9. Holy Unclear On The Concept, Batman! (nt)

[hunter]

10. Hmmm... Have you ever seen this place?

http://www.gutenberg.org

They've got more public domain books than my library ever did and it's easy to make copies.

[piratefish08]

11. do you understand the definition of "public domain"?

methinks not.

[MedicalAdmin]

13. Yes.

Like many library patrons, I check out one or two weekly.

[TalkingDog]

5. What do I do with this cheque for Buttle?

Have A Laugh Now At The Horror Of Things To Come:
http://academic.depauw.edu/aevans_web/HONR101-02/WebPages/Fall%202007/Kate%20W/Brazil%20the%20third/plot%20page.html

[girl gone mad]

12. k & r

[originalpckelly]

14. As it should be.

Knowledge should be free.