tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post8434067510660297150..comments2024-03-28T13:39:27.601-07:00Comments on DSHR's Blog: Your Tax Dollars At WorkDavid.http://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-34562864917960877722018-04-16T12:26:34.083-07:002018-04-16T12:26:34.083-07:00Fazal, the documents the GPO publishes are not sci...Fazal, the documents the GPO publishes are not scientific articles submitted to journals by government scientists, which is what this post is about.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-16985622059752475622018-04-16T09:22:44.032-07:002018-04-16T09:22:44.032-07:00The government does sometimes accept responsibili...The government does sometimes accept responsibility for free distribution of copyright free information:<br />https://pueblo.gpo.gov/Publications/PuebloPubs.phpFazal Majidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11835052457887138059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-62586207681606973412018-04-14T13:47:10.853-07:002018-04-14T13:47:10.853-07:00Dario Taraborelli's The citation graph is one ...Dario Taraborelli's <a href="https://boingboing.net/2018/04/14/open-graphs.html" rel="nofollow"><i>The citation graph is one of humankind's most important intellectual achievements</i></a> points out that it isn't just articles:<br /><br />"Raw citation data being non-copyrightable, it's ironic that the vision of building a comprehensive index of scientific literature has turned into a billion-dollar business, with academic institutions paying cripplingly expensive annual subscriptions for access and the public locked out."<br /><br />The piece is about the <a href="https://i4oc.org/" rel="nofollow">Initiative for Open Citations</a>, which in its first year has made significant progress:<br /><br />"the fraction of indexed scientific articles with open citation data (as measured by Crossref) has <a href="https://github.com/elifesciences/datacapsule-crossref/blob/analysis/notebooks/citation-stats.ipynb" rel="nofollow">surpassed 50%</a> and the number of <a href="https://www.crossref.org/reports/members-with-open-references/" rel="nofollow">participating publishers has risen to 490</a>. <b>Over half a billion references are now openly available to the public without any copyright restriction.</b>"<br /><br />But I'm shocked to see the usual suspects "Elsevier, IEEE, Wolters Kluwer Health, IOP Publishing, ACS" as the only significant hold-outs.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-26389886674939666372018-04-14T13:28:43.450-07:002018-04-14T13:28:43.450-07:00Chris, I have three points:
1. You could have use...Chris, I have three points:<br /><br />1. You could have used the example of the Bible. Printing and distributing the Bible or Shakespeare in book form incurs significant costs, which have to be covered. Springer distributing Klein <i>et al</i> to me incurs no significant cost whatsoever. The PDF is 441,445 bytes, so they are charging 9 cents/KB. My mobile phone carrier charges me about $55/month for 1GB/month, and throws in free phone calls, texts, and slower data over the 1GB. So my mobile phone carrier is over 1,600 times cheaper (even ignoring the phone calls, texts, and slower data). So $39.95 per article bears absolutely no relationship to cost.<br /><br />2. Works such as Shakespeare <i>were</i> copyright, and the authors (presumably) got paid from their publishers and in his case from the performances. In those days, the copyright eventually expired, so the works entered the public domain <i>after</i> having been monetized through copyright. Alas, thanks to Mickey Mouse, that no longer happens.<br /><br />3. The purpose of copyright is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause" rel="nofollow">"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors ... the exclusive Right to their ... Writings"</a>. In the case of US government works in the US, the authors' "Progress of Science and useful Arts" was already rewarded by the federal government using my tax dollars. The authors don't need copyright to monetize their work, not that any of Springer's $39.95/article would get to them. As a US taxpayer, I paid for this work on terms that were supposed to make it available to me. But the publishers, the government, and the librarians are conspiring together to deprive me of access to work for which I paid.David.https://www.blogger.com/profile/14498131502038331594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4503292949532760618.post-41180197624947565562018-04-14T12:31:25.079-07:002018-04-14T12:31:25.079-07:00Of course if you go down to a decent bookstore you...Of course if you go down to a decent bookstore you can buy a copy of Shakespeare's Plays, for real (and not inconsiderable) money!<br /><br />I do worry about this, as intuitively it seems wrong in the examples you quote (and similar ones from Ross Mounce and others). But there seems to be nothing wrong with asking someone to pay for a public domain work. OTOH, having got a copy, it is presumably perfectly OK to make it freely available... perhaps after neutralising the formatting a bit!<br /><br />I'll ask a friend of mine who's into (C).Chris Rusbridgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06087447503626434385noreply@blogger.com