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submitted 11 months ago by Star@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] General_Effort@lemmy.world -4 points 11 months ago

legally

Not necessarily. They often do not own the copyright, so then it depends on fair use exceptions. The real owners have gone after authors, which may be the reason they don't make their articles downloadable by default.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The asking makes it legal if I recall correctly.

They can't host a site with all their articles/papers/research, but if anyone asks for a single copy, they can provide it at their discretion.

And since they don't make any money either way, most provide it and are happy to do so.

[-] mumblerfish@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

You mean asking the publisher?

When you publish an academic paper, the journal/publisher makes you sign a transfer-of-copyright-thing. For example, that meant I could not publish my own papers as a part of my thesis. I had to ask the journals for permission to do that. Depending on how that transfer-agreement is formulated (and I imagine every publisher have a different one), an author giving away a paper they authored to someone on twitter or wherever may not be allowed. Only if you'd ask the publisher and get an ok.

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

It depends. Some publishers ask the authors to transfer copyright. Others don't. Even for the ones that do, the pre-print still belongs to the authors.

[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world -2 points 11 months ago

What's more likely?

You don't understand the exact details of this?

Or a metric shit ton of published academics are flagrantly violating copyright law and openly encouraging people to do it?

[-] mumblerfish@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I can easily say that every academic I know and have as friends, which is all but two people, have surely "flagrantly violated copyright law". I have no doubt. They have even asked me for help doing it. I can also tell you that none of those have ever read one of those copyright transfers. I did, once, but I do not understand law-speak and do not remember what it said. I just know that my university had that as a policy -- because of lawyers -- what we had to do to redistribute our articles. That is also why I had a "may not" in my comment and could only refer to anecdotes, because, surprise, I do not understand the exact details about this. But you know this, because that was in my comment.

[-] General_Effort@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago

Not generally. There may be fair use exceptions allowing the sharing in some situations (depending on jurisdiction) or the publisher/owner may allow it as part of the licensing contract. But I don't know in what jurisdiction/under what contract, it would be legal to copy something just because some random person asked.

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[-] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Well, opinions on morality... I think the whole artificial paywalling should be abolished as being against the public interest. A large faction here seems to take a very right-wing view on property, including copyrights, and will always side with owner.

How would you turn your moral intuition into a general law?

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)
[-] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Tricky intuition. It would mean that authors could not transfer all rights. In that sense, it would limit what they can do with their output. Depending on how far you want to take this, it might not matter or it might not matter a lot. EG how much would you pay for the rights to an ebook if the author can always go and create a legal torrent?

Do you really think it should matter if the new owner is an individual or a corporation? If you only limit corporations, then the rights will simply be transferred to individuals.

this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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