Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Advocacy Group Violates Copyright
word munger writes "Commercial scholarly publishers are beginning to get afraid of the open access movement. They've hired a high-priced consultant to help them sway public opinion in favor of copyright restrictions on taxpayer-funded research. Funny thing is, their own website contains several copyright violations. It seems they pulled their images directly from the Getty Images website — watermarks and all — without paying for their use."
From the article:
"They want to restrict access to publicly-funded research results by requiring that everyone pay a fee to see it."
If the research is funded by the public, didn't we already pay to see it?
Just not when *you* do it.
How do the hell do you know for certain that site didn't violate copyright by paying Getty Images for use of the images while still keeping the watermark?
As far as I can see, just the appearance of the watermark isn't a certain indicator that their copyright was being violated at all. Did anybody ask Getty?
I love how slashdot posts some blog entry and states definitely that this was copyright violation. If only they were this hard on people and sites who you know, pirate movies,music and games.
The undergrads aren't paid at all, and in almost all labs part of that money is going to "the one guy who sat on his fat butt with 3 letters after his name". Incidentally, in our lab, some undergrads are paid and other undergrads do work for research/thesis credits. The guy with the 3 letters after his name does an awful lot of work himself. All joking aside, I'm pretty sure that's the norm.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
What I am really trying to say is that I never really got jokes in school and I got beat up a lot! It took me many years of endless pounding on my face by almost everyone that I finally started to get them. Then when I did get the joke and thought they weren't funny I had to tell everyone how stupid they are and thus I get beat up a lot. So all I can do is come to /. and make fun of you guys. I imagine you would all beat me up if you could.
--
I particularly enjoy rubbing your noses in my towering intellect. On a personal note, I am an avid mustard enthusiast.
mookie da wookie
Are we overlooking the fact that this is a "high-priced consultant" group, and "Joe Average" is, well, your average Joe? Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I forget sometimes that our government already considers corporations to be legal people. Why should this situation be any different, right?
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
Troll me down again, but while I may disagree with many slash dotters about when something should be publicly funded, this 2nd amendment purist, capitalist, right wingnut is honored to stand with the most radical left wing, nationalize everything liberal when something is publicly funded. All federal research, federally funded research, should be in the public domain and for any use by US citizens, and by extension, the world. Most of us who are interested in this data would just as soon be able to get loads of open data anyway. That includes all NASA research, images, all government data, census, geographical, geological, or any other sort of non-classified data that the government might collect or generate as part of its ongoing operation.
It's our data.
This is my sig.
So some stupid web designer put some images on the site he was hired to make, that means the whole organization is hypocritical?
Not to defend their movement or anything, but assuming the site wasnt made in-house by an "IP believer", the situation is ironic, not hypocritical.
I'm in the humanities so things may be different in the hard sciences.
In order to get your article published you have to subscribe to the journal and in most cases the society that the produces the journal. When you get published you don't get paid and the publishers take the copyright. Because they take the copyright when you want to revise the paper, turn it into a book, or even pass it out to use in your own class you have to get permission. Now they always give permission but they are under no legal obligation to do so. They own the article outright.
Then the journals turn around and sell access to their articles to a database company like ebsco or someone else. That database company then charges universities for access to those articles.
As academics part of what we get paid for is to publish. So the university pays us to publish and then turns around and has pay someone else to get access to those very same articles that they paid to have written in the first place. Sure they get access to lots of other articles written by people from other universities but the fact is they are paying twice for these articles. I'm sure there are lots of other businesses that wish they had the same business model.
To top it off, as I said earlier, a lot of these journals are the official publications of academic societies. These societies are organized by academics in the field for academics in that field. It is supposed to help with the advancement and promotion of that area of study. So why are they taking the copyrights of their members? Sadly, most academics don't know or care about intellectual property and so the few times I've asked that very question I've been met with "I don't know" or the editor of the journal trying to defend profiting off our backs.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
It's possible that they DID have permission to use those images, and that they simply displayed the watermarked ones by mistake. That's an awfully serious charge you guys are throwing around without evidence.