Re: [ECOLOG-L] (il)legality of sharing PDF papers??
I may have missed the point of the recent inquiry. Are we discussing the chances of getting prosecuted for sharing files, or are we talking about the morality of doing that? If the former, then I am certainly in full agreement with Gavin and Bill that indeed the laws are such that probably if they want to they'll get me. If it's the latter, then I still find it perfectly fine and in fact virtuous to share information as widely as possible. I think I've explained earlier why I think so, and it is in this sense, IMHO, that it is important to take into account that we do not profit from doing that. I also think there is a big difference between cracker-kids who are having fun with somebody's code and researchers who have themselves participated pro bono in peer review, editing and running the whole editorial process for those Journals. Another metaphor that comes to my mind is the Washington Beltway, where the posted speed limit is 55 mph. You will have to look really hard to find a car going at that speed. The average is somewhere around 65-70. So, yes, pretty much anybody can be prosecuted. But if you go with the flow it almost never happens. I don't know why we need to have laws that are irrelevant and unenforceable. Ask a lawyer. Regards, Alexey -- Alexey Voinov _ !!! please note new e-mail address: aavoi...@gmail.com !!! _ Chesapeake Research Consortium Community Modeling Program Johns Hopkins University Dept. of Geography and Environm. Engineering 645 Contees Wharf Road, P.O. Box 28, Edgewater, MD 21037 TEL: 410 798-1283; 703 880-1178WWW: http://www.likbez.com/AV Fellow, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics,University of Vermont President,Int.Envir.Modeling. and Software Soc.,http://www.iemss.org/ New book: Systems Science and Modeling for Ecological Economics http://books.elsevier.com/companions/9780123725837
Re: [ECOLOG-L] (il)legality of sharing PDF papers??
The UK system seems unusual, I am unaware of any such arrangement elsewhere, but in any case it seems from his posting that governments subsidise the producers of material that is circulated in libraries - the users do not pay (users are not necessarily taxpayers). Given the global nature of the internet, trying to conform to the different standards of different countries seems unworkable. However I think that Gavin is absolutely right about copyright violation, it makes no difference whether it is done for profit or not. And it is not a matter of Depriving another of rightful profit from works they hold copyright on since there is no need to prove that the violator would have bought the material. As Jane pointed out in an earlier posting, if she has to buy the rights to a picture to use in a lecture whe will probably not use it at all. Many people put cartoon figures like Dilbert on their personal websites without any intent to pay for what is basically a cute idea without any financial value. Software publishers make a big deal of busting teenage kids whom they claim have stolen millions of dollars worth of software without ever showing that the kids either used or sold the material. For many of these young hackers this kind of piracy is a hobby and they often have no idea what the software is for. So there is no financial loss to the publisher or gain to the pirate, but they can still be prosecuted. Bill Silvert - Original Message - From: Gavin Simpson gavin.simp...@ucl.ac.uk To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 12:20 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] (il)legality of sharing PDF papers?? In the UK, for example, libraries *pay* the copyright holders of works they lend out, on your behalf, via a copyright clearing service. The money comes from the Government and hence ultimately from our taxes. So you are paying to licence (in some sense) the copyrighted works Fair use is something specific to US (and some other countries) copyright law. The UK doesn't have the same provisions. What might be acceptable in one jurisdiction could be illegal in another. To me the ultimate test is very simple: if you personally are not profiting from it - how can you be prosecuted? Depriving another of rightful profit from works they hold copyright on? Unfortunately (or fortunately, from the point of the publisher), you do not make or enforce the law. Anyone considering sharing copyrighted works that is concerned that they might be opening themselves up to prosecution would do well to seek expert, local legal advice.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] (il)legality of sharing PDF papers??
On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 10:50 -0400, Alexey A Voinov wrote: Dear Dong Gill: Thanks for sharing Jan Reichelt's response to your inquiry. So what are you still confused about? Think of Mendeley as a library. You bring your old books to them and they share them with other people. They also help other people find you to borrow a book from you directly. As simple as that. Is there anything criminal in what libraries do? In the UK, for example, libraries *pay* the copyright holders of works they lend out, on your behalf, via a copyright clearing service. The money comes from the Government and hence ultimately from our taxes. So you are paying to licence (in some sense) the copyrighted works Fair use is something specific to US (and some other countries) copyright law. The UK doesn't have the same provisions. What might be acceptable in one jurisdiction could be illegal in another. To me the ultimate test is very simple: if you personally are not profiting from it - how can you be prosecuted? Depriving another of rightful profit from works they hold copyright on? Unfortunately (or fortunately, from the point of the publisher), you do not make or enforce the law. Anyone considering sharing copyrighted works that is concerned that they might be opening themselves up to prosecution would do well to seek expert, local legal advice. G Regards, Alexey Date:Fri, 22 May 2009 23:58:02 +0100 From:Dong Gill Kim donggill...@gmail.com Subject: (il)legality of sharing PDF papers?? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear all: I was wondering how the founder of Mendeley (a website for pdf file sharing) is thinking about (il)legality of sharing PDF papers. So I sent a message to him. With his permission I shared his reply as below. After reading his reply, I am still very confused. What do you think about it? I would like to hear your comments. Here are my comments to your question about the (il)legality of sharing PDF papers. There's no general/common answer to your question, and we've had extensive discussions with copyright lawyers about this topic. First, consider what is common practice right now - the academic community is sending PDF document back and forth either via e-mail, or use shared network folder etc., and I wonder if anyone asks him/herself whether sending a PDF document via e-mail would be illegal. Additionallay, consider the following cases: You're sharing a paper with one of the colleagues in your lab. Both of you have access to the same databases via the university, so why should you not be allowed to share a paper with him that he himself could legally download, too? You're sharing a paper with a colleague at another university, and he also has licensed access to a database that contains the paper. Again, why should you not be allowed to share a paper with him that he himself could legally download, too? Then there's the case of sharing papers from Open Access databases (e.g. PLoS or BioMedCentral papers, or many papers on PubMed), or papers licensed with a Creative Commons license. You're explicity and legally allowed to share and distribute these papers. You're also allowed to share your own working papers or pre-publication prints, and usually also papers that you yourself have authored. For over 90% of papers, you're even allowed to post them on your homepage for free download, see: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#self-archiving-legal Lastly, the case of sharing copyrighted material with other researchers who have not licensed access to this material. Even here, it's not automatically copyright infringement - fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review exemption (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use). Besides, we're talking with publishers all the time, and our goal is to work with them, not against them. Also, we have set up measures such as a limited number of people in shared groups, shared groups are not visible from outside, shared group members have to be in the contact network of the group admin and need to be invited, etc., so that we make sure to have tried everything that illegal, large-scale filesharing is prohibited. I'm not a lawyer myself, and ultimately you need to check and decide for your own case(there might be many more than I just mentioned above). But I still hope that my explanation helped to clarify the situation a little bit. Thank you for all your support (especially to Alexey), and we're doing our best to develop a great tool for the academic community! Let me know if you have further questions. Best wishes Jan -- Jan Reichelt Founder Director Mendeley 112 Clerkenwell Road London, EC1M 5SA United Kingdom Mail: jan.reich...@mendeley.com Web: http://www.mendeley.com
Re: [ECOLOG-L] (il)legality of sharing PDF papers??
One could argue that pdf sharing and pdf depositories are in the best interest of the journals. The more widely the pdf's are shared, the more likely they are to be cited and so the higher the impact rating of the journal playing to the perception that this rating means quality. So, playing on that thread. How do you folks feel about the most recent information that I got from ISI. Quote, Journals originating in the US are held to higher standards than those from other parts of the world. That is directly from the ISI representative for screening journals for ISI inclusion. Malcolm On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Dong Gill Kim donggill...@gmail.com wrote: Dear all: I was wondering how the founder of Mendeley (a website for pdf file sharing) is thinking about (il)legality of sharing PDF papers. So I sent a message to him. With his permission I shared his reply as below. After reading his reply, I am still very confused. What do you think about it? I would like to hear your comments. Here are my comments to your question about the (il)legality of sharing PDF papers. There's no general/common answer to your question, and we've had extensive discussions with copyright lawyers about this topic. First, consider what is common practice right now - the academic community is sending PDF document back and forth either via e-mail, or use shared network folder etc., and I wonder if anyone asks him/herself whether sending a PDF document via e-mail would be illegal. Additionallay, consider the following cases: You're sharing a paper with one of the colleagues in your lab. Both of you have access to the same databases via the university, so why should you not be allowed to share a paper with him that he himself could legally download, too? You're sharing a paper with a colleague at another university, and he also has licensed access to a database that contains the paper. Again, why should you not be allowed to share a paper with him that he himself could legally download, too? Then there's the case of sharing papers from Open Access databases (e.g. PLoS or BioMedCentral papers, or many papers on PubMed), or papers licensed with a Creative Commons license. You're explicity and legally allowed to share and distribute these papers. You're also allowed to share your own working papers or pre-publication prints, and usually also papers that you yourself have authored. For over 90% of papers, you're even allowed to post them on your homepage for free download, see: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#self-archiving-legal Lastly, the case of sharing copyrighted material with other researchers who have not licensed access to this material. Even here, it's not automatically copyright infringement - fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review exemption (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use). Besides, we're talking with publishers all the time, and our goal is to work with them, not against them. Also, we have set up measures such as a limited number of people in shared groups, shared groups are not visible from outside, shared group members have to be in the contact network of the group admin and need to be invited, etc., so that we make sure to have tried everything that illegal, large-scale filesharing is prohibited. I'm not a lawyer myself, and ultimately you need to check and decide for your own case(there might be many more than I just mentioned above). But I still hope that my explanation helped to clarify the situation a little bit. Thank you for all your support (especially to Alexey), and we're doing our best to develop a great tool for the academic community! Let me know if you have further questions. Best wishes Jan -- Jan Reichelt Founder Director Mendeley 112 Clerkenwell Road London, EC1M 5SA United Kingdom Mail: jan.reich...@mendeley.com Web: http://www.mendeley.com Tel.: +44 (0)207 253 1595 2009/5/14 Alexey Voinov aavoi...@gmail.com To All: I just want to make sure that this excellent link does not get buried in the discussion. Mendeley offers some really cool services to share your papers. It's not as good as the peer-to-peer exchange, but supposedly safer in terms of copyright. Please take a look at http://www.mendeley.com/ Mendeley Desktop is free academic software for managing and sharing research papers. It is pretty cool to keep track of all the papers that you have downloaded to your hard disk and works like iTunes for music. Mendeley Web lets you manage your papers online, discover research trends and connect to like-minded researchers. The more of us join, the larger the WWW library that we will get access to. Please consider joining. The article that was sent earlier is at
