Re: Unauthorized downloading of scientific information

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

Bernie, thanks, this is exactly the kind of situation that causes me
concern about the curious innocent being swept up in our zeal to eliminate
piracy.

The electronic medium is more than a different format. It provides the
means to do completely new types of research, like the bibliometric study
Bernie mentioned.

There are other types of study that would lend themselves to downloading
not only enitre journal runs, but the literature for entire disciplines,
e.g. artificial intelligence research.  There are programs out there that
can read a great many newspapers and create a synthesis of them on a daily
basis (see Peter Suber's OA News for June 05 for some links).  Surely
there are people who would like to run these kinds of programs against
other databases, and come up with results such as the main patterns in
science, the popularity of different research methods - maybe even
identify our most basic assumptions?

Then, too, there could be librarians and/or archivists who are not
convinced that enough has been done to ensure the preservation of the
scholarly record.  I remember a friend in library school who seemed to be
bent on downloading the entire internet - an early Brewster Kahle, if you
like.  Given the ease with which articles - or journal runs - can be
removed by publishers or aggregators, perhaps this is wise.  Will we one
day be calling on these people, to access materials we have lost, and
thanking them for their efforts?

Some researchers have no doubt had the experience of using journal
articles in their research, only to find that the journal was dropped from
a package before their research was completed.  This could make final
checking of data and references seriously inconvenient. Would someone in
this position be tempted to copy entire journal runs in a future research
project?

We have an obligation to monitor and enforce compliance with the terms of
our license agreements, of course.  If we do find people downloading large
amounts of information, however, let us remember there are potentially
very innocent reasons for this, and not assume intent of piracy with no
proof.

a personal view by,

Heather Morrison

The value we add as librarians does not depend on whether we purchase the
information we provide.  Anonymous.

On Fri,  1 Jul 2005 23:18:21 EDT liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu 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