Tribute to Aaron Swartz: Watch his "How we stopped SOPA" keynote at F2C2012 <http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/tribute-to-aaron-swartz-watch-his-how-we-stopped-sopa-keynote-at-f2c2012/>
Open access to scholarly literature and research online depends upon an open Internet. It is easy to forget this is not a given. The Internet has become such an integral part of our daily lives as academics. We can hardly imagine now a world without it. We have sensed its potential and have been building an information infrastructure based on our experiences with its free beginnings. It is easy to take that freedom for granted. It was one year ago today that Congressional leaders in the United States shelved two pieces of legislation, ostensibly geared toward curbing online piracy, but which could have had far-reaching and unintended consequences, threatening through censorship this concept of a free and open Internet. It was a close call. The House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate version, the PROTECT Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), were widely believed, both within Congress and among their supporters in the media industry (including many commercial academic publishers), to be destined for easy passage. However, a groundswell of organizational and, most significantly, citizen opposition forced the lawmakers to back down. A significant voice in that citizen opposition to SOPA and PIPA was a fellow named Aaron Swartz. Aaron was a prodigious young computer programmer and an activist dedicated to the fight for free and open access to information and knowledge on the Internet. ... Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access <http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com> Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
