[open-science] Crucially overlooked Ebola research article is paywalled at... Elsevier

Wed Apr 15 15:55:14 UTC 2015

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 3:57 PM, Thomas Kluyver <takowl at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 15 April 2015 at 10:11, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> But of course we can't do this experiment because we'll be sued.
>
>
> If you could escape the layers of lawyers trying to stop you, this sounds
> like some form of civil disobedience might be applicable.
>

I have blogged about CD 4 years ago:
https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/07/27/what-is-civil-disobedience/ . If
the cause is right and the likelihood of success non-zero then CD may be
the right way forward. But other reasonable options should be tried
beforehand.

I would never urge someone else to carry out an act of civil disobedience
if I were not also prepared to suffer the consequences.

> If a publisher sued over this, they would have to stand up in court and
> argue that protecting their profits justifies restricting access to this
> information. Of course, that's not to say that they'd lose, but it would
> raise the profile of the issue. I imagine it's a financial risk that no
> institution would take on, though.
>

Note that Aaron Swartz was not sued by a publisher but by the Federal
authorities. If a publisher can, perhaps through lobbying, convince the
authorities that an action was a criminal, not a civil, offence they
effectively escape all condemnation.

Note also that some publishers have huge amounts of money to spend on
lawyers. The American Chemical Society has lost ca 40 million dollars in
law cases (including suing Google). Admittedly these were not directly on
copyright violation, but I have no doubt the ethos extends to that area.

>
> Thomas
>
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-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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