Copyright Fail: 'Pirating' Academic Papers Not Only Commonplace, But Now Seen As Mainstream

from the icanhaz-#icanhazpdf dept

Techdirt has been writing about open access for many years. The idea and practice are certainly spreading, but they're spreading more slowly than many in the academic world had hoped. That's particularly frustrating when you're a researcher who can't find a particular academic paper freely available as open access, and you really need it now. So it's no surprise that people resort to other methods, like asking around if anyone has a copy they could send. The Internet being the Internet, it's also no surprise that this ad-hoc practice has evolved into a formalized system, using Twitter and the hashtag #icanhazpdf to ask other researchers if they have a copy of the article in question. But what is surprising is that recently there have been two articles on mainstream sites that treat the approach as if it's really quite a reasonable thing to do. Here's Quartz: Most academic journals charge expensive subscriptions and, for those without a login, fees of $30 or more per article. Now academics are using the hashtag #icanhazpdf to freely share copyrighted papers.



Scientists are tweeting a link of the paywalled article along with their email address in the hashtag -- a riff on the infamous meme of a fluffy cat’s "I Can Has Cheezburger?" line. Someone else who does have access to the article downloads a pdf of the paper and emails the file to the person requesting it. The initial tweet is then deleted as soon as the requester receives the file. And here's BBC News: In many countries, it's against the law to download copyrighted material without paying for it -- whether it's a music track, a movie, or an academic paper. Published research is protected by the same laws, and access is generally restricted to scientists -- or institutions -- who subscribe to journals.



But some scientists argue that their need to access the latest knowledge justifies flouting the law, and they're using a Twitter hashtag to help pirate scientific papers. Both stories go on to give some background to the approach and its hashtag. But what's striking is that after mentioning that this kind of activity may be against the law, there's none of the traditional hand-wringing about "piracy", and how it will end Western civilization as we know it unless tough measures are brought in to stop it.

It's surely no accident that this novel relaxed attitude to sharing materials covered by copyright concerns academic papers. After all, such sharing lies at the heart of research, which derives much of its power from the fact that people can build on what has been found before, rather than being forced to re-discover old knowledge. The idea of locking away that knowledge behind paywalls, and making it hard for any researcher to access it, is so self-evidently absurd, that even mainstream publications like Quartz or BBC News apparently have no difficulty accepting that viewpoint, implicitly through their coverage, if not explicitly. It's a further sign of copyright's dwindling relevance in a world whose central technology -- the Internet -- is built on sharing and openness.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: academics, copyright, journals, knowledge, open access, papers, research, sharing