On Tue, 2009-05-12 at 10:19 +0100, William Silvert wrote: > I think that the use of the term "peer-to-peer" in this discussion is in the > literal sense of one person sending to another and not in the technical > sense of using torrents to download files from several individual computers. > It thus involves only an exchange of emails and no special software.
I think Alexey Voinov (in reply to whom I made my first contribution to this thread) made fairly explicit reference to the more technical sense of the phase 'peer-to-peer'. He likened it to the widespread sharing of digital music. > > While I don't know of any cases where scientists have been prosecuting for > distributing PDFs of their papers, it seems that a publisher is more likely > to go after someone who "publishes" on their website than someone who sends > out PDFs in response to individual requests. > > Here is a further note on publishers and PDFs inspired by a problem my wife > ran into yesterday. She was reviewing a paper and wanted to consult one of > the references that was published in the same journal in 1991. Her > institute's web subscription only provides access to the last ten years, so > she was wondering how to get the article. I recalled that I once had the > same problem and asked the editor to send me the paper, but he was not > allowed to - in other words, here I was reviewing for free a paper that was > submitted for free and if I wanted to check all the references I was > expected to pay for them! Outrageous. > > As it happened I already had a reprint of the paper my wife needed, but > technically, at least as far as Gavin sees it, sharing this with her might > have been an act of rampant priacy for which the publisher could bring me to > court! Will you *please* stop putting words into my mouth and making such ridiculous assessments of my views on this subject? You are basing this on a single reply to a very specific posting by Alexey Voinov, encouraging readers of this list server to join him in widespread copyright theft. I, quite frankly, don't care what you do with your own pdfs, reprints or whatever. I only wanted to point out that widespread abuse of copyright law may be illegal in the country in which one resides. As far as I know, Bill, we have never met, and this is the only correspondence we have ever entered into, so why do you presume to know my thoughts on this matter? Furthermore, thanks (in part) to all the cheap-skate music sharers out there we have been encumbered by crappy digital rights management (that act to further limit what we can do with music we may have bought legally) for far longer than we might otherwise have been. Publishers won't sit idly by[1] as people try to commit widespread theft from them (e.g. by setting up a p2p network - Yes Bill, I'm being explicit here just so you don't think I am including the kind of petty distribution that you have been describing) - there could be unintended consequences that make us all suffer. Would you really like to see publishers encrypting PDFs with a digital signature that limited where you could open articles that your institution had subscribed to? Or that could be rescinded if your institution decided not to continue with their subscription? No, I doubt it. There are better ways to get scientists to contribute to solving the problem than cajoling them into committing crime. Your use of my name to represent someone who condones the status quo and adheres to the rules couldn't be farther from the truth. G [1] Not a Journal Publisher, but this is what Thompson Reuters (our ISI "friend") thinks about people who provide means to convert the journal styles files in their Endnote product into open files, for use in open source software: http://dltj.org/article/endnote-zotero-lawsuit/ > > Bill Silvert > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jane Shevtsov" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 8:36 PM > Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] PEER TO PEER PDF SHARING > > > > Peer-to-peer is great for sharing large files, like music or videos, > > but for most PDFs I think it has little advantage over simply putting > > the files on your website. Downloading peer-to-peer requires special > > software; downloading from a website does not. Also, search is easier > > if the paper is on the web. > > > > Jane Shevtsov -- %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~% Dr. Gavin Simpson [t] +44 (0)20 7679 0522 ECRC, UCL Geography, [f] +44 (0)20 7679 0565 Pearson Building, [e] gavin.simpsonATNOSPAMucl.ac.uk Gower Street, London [w] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucfagls/ UK. WC1E 6BT. [w] http://www.freshwaters.org.uk %~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%~%
