"July 31, 2011
By David Glenn
Cambridge, Mass.
This past April in Switzerland, Lawrence Lessig gave an impassioned lecture denouncing publishers' paywalls, which charge fees to read scholarly research, thus blocking most people from access.
It was a familiar theme for Mr. Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who is one of the world's most outspoken critics of intellectual-property laws. But in this speech he gave special attention to JSTOR, a not-for-profit journal archive. He cited a tweet from a scholar who called JSTOR "morally offensive" for charging $20 for a six-page 1932 article from the California Historical Society Quarterly.
The JSTOR archive is not usually cast as a leading villain by open-access advocates. But Mr. Lessig surely knew in April something that his Swiss audience did not: Aaron Swartz-a friend and former Harvard colleague of Mr. Lessig's-was under investigation for misappropriating more than 4.8 million scholarly papers and other files from JSTOR.
On July 19, exactly three months after Mr. Lessig's speech, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging that Mr. Swartz had abused computer networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and disrupted JSTOR's servers. If convicted on all counts, Mr. Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison."
" Video Info
English (181 Lines)
Czech (100 %)
Italian (100 %)
Spanish (100 %)
Ukrainian (100 %)
"...We should say to modern democratic government, you need to beware of incumbents bearing policy fixes. Because their job, the job of the incumbents, is not the same as your job, the job of the public policy maker. Their job is profit for them. Your job is the public good.
And it is completely fair, for us to say, that until this addiction is solved, we should insist on minimalism in what government does. The kind of minimalism Jeff Jarvis spoke off when he spoke of "do no harm".
An internet that embraces principles of open and free access, a neutral network to guarantee this open access, to protect the outsider.
But here is the one think we know about this meeting, and its relationship to the future of the internet. The future of the internet is not Twitter, it is not Facebook, it is not Google, it is not even Rupert Murdoch.
The future of the internet is not here. It wasn't invited, it does not even know how to be invited, because it doesn't yet focus on policies and fora like this.
The least we can do is to preserve the architecture of this network that protects this future that is not here."
"June 7, 2011, 5:55 pm
By Jeff Young
A university press in China appears to be selling transcripts of Yale University's free online courses in a new volume, sparking complaints from Yale officials. Under the terms of the course giveaway, called Open Yale Courses, others cannot profit from the material. (...)
An official from Shaanxi Normal University told Global Times that it secured permission from the author but not from Yale, and added that it is now investigating the matter."
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