http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=401386&c=1
Excerpt:
All reports produced by the House of Commons have, for example, been scanned by a company called ProQuest. Its site is great - pages are searchable backwards and forwards. The only problem is that access is restricted and comes with a charge. Each downloaded parliamentary report bears a little inscription: "Copyright © 2006, ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved."
Think about this for a second. Here is a company that lays exclusive claim to material produced by the elected representatives of the people. A company whose business idea it is to restrict access to our common heritage. This is upsetting first of all because it goes against the rights of citizens in a democracy to have the documents produced by their parliament freely available. Second, ProQuest is claiming copyright to material whose copyright has long expired. And finally it makes academic research far more difficult. Unless you belong to a university that's prepared to pay for the stuff, you won't get to read it.
So, I've taken it upon myself to start an organisation called MLOP, the "Movement for the Liberation of Old Papers". What I do is hack into restricted websites, download the documents I'm interested in, and then use my favourite open-source paint program to remove the copyright statements from each page. Next I assemble the pages into one single pdf file and upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will become universally available to both researchers and citizens. Yes, it does take a bit of time, but it's a very worthy cause (and I have a hardworking research assistant to help me).
I feel strongly about this, and I'm prepared to live with the legal consequences of my actions. This, after all, is the new frontier of civil rights - the right of access to information.
Erik Ringmar is professor of social and cultural studies at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. His books are available at the Internet Archive.
On Copyfraud see:
http://archiv.twoday.net/search?q=copyfraud
Excerpt:
All reports produced by the House of Commons have, for example, been scanned by a company called ProQuest. Its site is great - pages are searchable backwards and forwards. The only problem is that access is restricted and comes with a charge. Each downloaded parliamentary report bears a little inscription: "Copyright © 2006, ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved."
Think about this for a second. Here is a company that lays exclusive claim to material produced by the elected representatives of the people. A company whose business idea it is to restrict access to our common heritage. This is upsetting first of all because it goes against the rights of citizens in a democracy to have the documents produced by their parliament freely available. Second, ProQuest is claiming copyright to material whose copyright has long expired. And finally it makes academic research far more difficult. Unless you belong to a university that's prepared to pay for the stuff, you won't get to read it.
So, I've taken it upon myself to start an organisation called MLOP, the "Movement for the Liberation of Old Papers". What I do is hack into restricted websites, download the documents I'm interested in, and then use my favourite open-source paint program to remove the copyright statements from each page. Next I assemble the pages into one single pdf file and upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will become universally available to both researchers and citizens. Yes, it does take a bit of time, but it's a very worthy cause (and I have a hardworking research assistant to help me).
I feel strongly about this, and I'm prepared to live with the legal consequences of my actions. This, after all, is the new frontier of civil rights - the right of access to information.
Erik Ringmar is professor of social and cultural studies at the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. His books are available at the Internet Archive.
On Copyfraud see:
http://archiv.twoday.net/search?q=copyfraud
KlausGraf - am Dienstag, 15. April 2008, 01:10 - Rubrik: English Corner
