At Obsidian Wings, Dr. Science writes, Scientific information wants to be free:
Last Tuesday, information activist Aaron Swartz was arrested for downloading almost the entire contents of JSTOR. This arrest is prompting a lot of discussion about the massive fail that is current academic publishing.
JSTOR is a non-profit academic archive, holding journals for both non-profit and for-profit publishers in a one-stop shop. Libraries and other institutions pay a start-up and then a yearly fee for access: these fees are on the order of $1000-$10K or more per year. Once an institution has paid the fee, users there can access JSTOR. There are no individual subscriptions. JSTOR waives or reduces its fees for institutions in developing countries, including the entire continent of Africa.
Presumably, Swartz intended to put the JSTOR archive up on some kind of free online server. After he was caught, he gave the hard drives with the downloaded material to JSTOR, and they decided not to pursue the matter further. Swartz's arrest and charges come from the US Attorney's office, which has decided to throw the book at him. [...]
In the very good but very long discussion at Crooked Timber, where Swartz was an occasional commenter, Henry Farrell said:
I wonder just how long the academic journal model can continue in its current form.
There is a lot of messy debate here that is ready to explode. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons that JSTOR didn't want to go ahead with this was precisely because it feared having a cause celebre, with an articulate, intellectually attractive and selfless defendant, explode out of it. And I confidently predict that there is going to be one very unhappy prosecutor who has no idea of the major political shitstorm that she is kicking up by doing this. Aaron is very rightly beloved by a whole lot of people – he's spent the last several years providing unpaid help for a variety of good causes.
The "messy debate" Henry talks about is because the state of academic publishing in the fields of science, technology and medicine is profoundly messed up. ...
At Daily Kos on this date in 2004:
Kerry's strategy this cycle has been to give Republicans as little material to churn through their Noise Machine as possible, all the while letting Bush beat himself.
It's been a sound strategy thus far, if a bit frustrating at times. Margaret Cho was disinvited from tonight's LGBT Unity event precisely for that reason. Democrats wanted to avoid another "Whoopi" moment. And Margaret is, er, 2000 times spicier than Whoopi at her raunchiest. Stupid move, but it fits Kerry's strategy.
And while they were not disinvited, Dean and Gore are being forced to "tone down" their speeches to strip out most anti-Bush rhetoric.
Democrats are scrambling to tamp down former Vice President Al Gore and firebrand Howard Dean before they step to the convention podium, worried they may embarrass John Kerry with red-meat anger and excessive Bush bashing.
The Democratic National Convention and Kerry campaign staffs are working feverishly to rewrite, polish and tone down speeches submitted in advance of today's convention opening bell.
Party leaders, including Kerry, said they know the four-day fete has to play in Peoria, not just on the FleetCenter parquet.
"Attack wins in some cases, but you don't win presidential elections (with it) because people are tired of it," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said on ABC's "This Week."
Exhibit A why bloggers won't be giving any hall speeches at future conventions.
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