Re: Unauthorized downloading of scientific information

[Samuel Trosow <strosow@uwo.ca>]

No doubt the publishers would view it as copyright infringement on a large
scale.  They would point to the incident as a shocking example of how
their property is not secure and how more laws are needed to protect
themselves from such horrid conduct.

Yes, and the sky is falling as well!

The better question would be to ask whether this type of use constitutes
fair-dealing / fair-use and whether it would be hampered by the
anti-circumvention/rights management rules. So this would be a very
interesting study to read, perhaps someone else on the list reconizes it
from Bernie's description and can provide a citation.

My tendency would be to say that those engaged with bibliometric studies
need to be able to access full text so this is not only a legitimate use,
but exactly the sort of non-infringing use that should be encouraged and
needs to be protected in this age of ultra-copyright, restrictive
licenses, rights management information, technological barriers and the
like.

This example also raises in my mind the important linkage that exists
between info systems research and policy issues.

Sam Trosow
University of Western Ontario

"Sloan, Bernie" wrote:

> Heather's remark about picking up "the curious innocent along with the
> pirate" reminded me of something.
>
> While searching the Web last week, I ran across a bibliometric study where
> the authors gathered data by downloading four or five years' worth of
> papers from 36 journals in a specific subject area. I was just wondering
> how this sort of activity might be viewed by a publisher?
>
> (Sorry, I couldn't reconstruct the search that got me to this study, so I
> can't supply specific details).
>
> Bernie Sloan