Harvard fellow hacked millions of papers

[Apostolos K.]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ACADEMIC_PAPERS_HACKED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATEÞFAULT&CTIME

Starting text: BOSTON (AP) -- A Harvard University fellow who was
studying ethics was charged with hacking into the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's computer network to steal nearly 5 million
academic articles.

Wow... is all I have to say! I think that this guy did it just to be
an activist, but I would like to see how this trial proceeds.

Personally I think that all journals should be open access - period.
People who write the articles are either dead (as in the case of 17th
century articles) or get paid no royalties for writing them. Journal
editors get no money (or little money) for editing journals, and peer
reviewers get nothing. I could go on a rant about this, but I
won't ;-) Let's just all agree to publish in open access journals
lol :-)

[hewa]

it is a good suggestion to make learning resources open, as a step towards "education for all",

but stealing is different issue. when it is open or not, those who have that bad habit will continue. 

interesting thing, specially those who preach about ethics as described in this article.

however, most important things that come to my mind,

"How can we use e-Learning to change such a bad behavioral habbit of learners ?"

[Jenny]

It is a messy problem because our society is built on the concept of division of labor.

How is the production of goods and services any different than the production of knowledge? What are the raw materials needed to produce knowledge? How were the raw materials created? Were just means used to obtain the raw materials, (in this case previous knowledge and access to it)? How can the effort a knowledge worker uses in producing knowledge artifacts be justly compensated by its users? Is knowledge consumed and should it be considered a finite resource? Why would a knowledge producer willingly create a surplus if he/she was not going to be adequately compensated? How has the cost of obtaining the raw materials to produce knowledge and the cost of distributing the knowledge changed with the internet? Has knowledge become cheaper to manufacture and distribute? Can society afford to let knowledge producers abandon their role over practical issues of compensation? Should intellectual property be protected by copyright when the raw materials used to create it were had through publicly supported grants? Is it logical to think that intellectual property can be distributed throughout society at no cost to the user, yet still provide the knowledge producer a means of just compensation?

The advent of the internet requires laws governing intellectual property be changed. The notion of the compensating knowledge workers to pursue truth and make it available  to society is essential. I don't believe society can afford to abandon current methods of knowledge production and rely exclusively on crowdsourcing to solve its most complex problems. I may be wrong. What do you think?   It  certainly will be interesting to follow the intellectual-law-breaking Harvard scholar as he makes his way through the justice system defending his actions. Maybe he is right and once produced, knowledge should be declared a universal resource. Like oxygen.  Thanks.

Jenny

[Mary Jean]

Thanks you for the details of the editors and reviews and etc., it is
an interesting point from the other side of things.


On Jul 19, 6:35 pm, "Apostolos K." <a.koutropou...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ACADEMIC_PAPERS_HACKED?SITE...FAULT&CTIME

[Mary Jean]

Of course it won't get the press it rightly deserves and we'll be left
scrounging for follow up stories.

Jean

[john stampe]

Jenny,

I am always skeptical when people try to able economic theory to
knowledge (and other non-economic concepts). It reminds me of the
concept of knowledge management (which is not actually about managing
knowledge).

Do we really produce knowledge? We may transfer knowledge, etc. but I
do not think we actually produce it. (Do not confuse invention with
knowledge)

Your second question (what are the raw materials ...) is exactly my
point about economics. I cannot think of any "raw materials" (except
maybe brains) that apply to knowledge.

I would add that you confuse the terms copyright and intellectual
property. Copyright is a type of intellectual property (along with
patents and trademarks), not something that protects intellectual
property.

John

[Apostolos K.]

I think that knowledge IS produced, of course the raw materials for
knowledge production (other than the brain) is knowledge itself and
the ability to go forth and experiment and process previous knowledge,
with new data to come up with something new. Now is that something
that can be quantified and sold? No it isn't! I can formulate idea X
and independently someone else can come up with idea X as well. Look
at inventions like radio and electricity for example. Also, unlike
commodities that are finite, if I tell my idea or theory to someone
else, I don't lose it, it's just that there are two people now with
the same theory that can go and do something with it.

It's just that in higher ed, where tenure and promotion is based on
your publication of ideas, people guard these ideas until they are
officially on paper. This is just plain wrong because it may take a
long time for those idea to be on paper (for you to get credit for
them) and in the mean time people who can benefit from them don't have
access to them.

To make matters worse, ideas subsidized by public funds (public
university professors, and all professors and researchers getting
government grants) take those ideas and put them in publications that
NOT ONLY do not make a dime for them, but COST their institutions
money in order to subscribe to them. The people making money, and
denying access, are people who have nothing to do with the idea
creation. They don't subsidize it and they don't create it.

Back to this harvard fellow though - I think that hacking into
someone's network is wrong, and I question the utility of downloading
5 million articles. At the same time however I question JSTOR's limit
on how many articles one can access. If you're paying for access, why
have a limit on amount?

[Vanessa Vaile]

maybe by setting a good example of how to share

[Chris Aldrich]

As a follow up this article is also interesting:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/33_gb_of_scientific_papers_-_and_a_manifesto_-_upl.php

Essentially an online compatriot posted a huge database of scientific papers along with a manifesto to encourage openness.

I'm a big fan of Matt Ridley's book Rational Optimist in which he discusses "ideas having sex" to create new an innovative ideas.  Of course to do so means that these ideas must be shared. In general, there are so many different ideas out there, that finding the good ones in the first place is the difficult thing.  Imagine, if you will, what the world would look like if Newton hadn't shared his ideas about his laws of Physics?

 

One of my favorite quotes on the fallacy of the diminishing returns of ideas: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” - Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Isaac McPherson.

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