5 ms·

Information should be free.

aeve890 27d ago
What's the point of statements so broad and ambiguous that they seem to disregard any kind of context or nuance? Do you really believe that _Information_ should be free? Which one? All of it?
MattDamonSpace 27d ago
“People who generate valuable information should be uncompensated”
- msftgreed 27d ago
  You say this like it's related to the parent quote. We could absolutely compensate people and not charge for information. It's not that hard to imagine that we could feed, house, care for, and provide a small stipend to authors, artists, etc. and also make their work output free to everyone who wants it. Does that require changing some other things? Absolutely. Would it be hard to convince people to try? Probably (I'm guessing HN crowd won't like this comment, considering it unreasonable.) Has it been a suggested way to organize society for almost 200 years with a long and well argued set of principles behind it? Sure enough!
- pdonis 27d ago
  The scientists who wrote the papers that Swartz downloaded were compensated, with the public's tax dollars. That should mean that we the public should now have free access to what we paid for. Unfortunately the government prefers to let private companies keep those papers behind paywalls.
  - ajam1507 25d ago
    JSTOR isn't just full of publicly funded work.
- xigoi 27d ago
  How much money do you think the scientists who wrote the papers are getting from the access fees? (Hint: it’s the only number that stays the same when you multiply it by sometting.)
hk1337 27d ago
Agreed, to an extent, but that doesn't mean you can breach any barrier someone has in place preventing access, take it, and make it publicly available.
- pdonis 27d ago
  The information Swartz was downloading was scientific papers that we, the public, have already paid for with our tax dollars. The crime here is that the government allows JSTOR and other private companies to still hold those papers behind paywalls instead of releasing them into the public domain as they should have been.
  - s1artibartfast 27d ago
    Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition.
    - pdonis 27d ago
      > Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. So when your tax dollars pay for a scientist to do research, you don't think the papers that document that research should be public property? If scientists want to keep their research private, they should find private funding. Note that, as in my previous post, I said "should". If you mean there isn't explicit language to that effect in the grants, see further comments below. > The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Invalid comparison. The scientific papers in question are not the personal property of the scientists. > Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. IMO this should be the case, and it's an outrage that it's not, since it should be an obvious requirement for any research that our tax dollars pay for. > That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition. Maybe that wasn't written into the grants explicitly, but that just means our government is (once again) failing to act in our best interests.

What's the point of statements so broad and ambiguous that they seem to disregard any kind of context or nuance? Do you really believe that _Information_ should be free? Which one? All of it?

MattDamonSpace 27d ago

“People who generate valuable information should be uncompensated”

msftgreed 27d ago
You say this like it's related to the parent quote. We could absolutely compensate people and not charge for information. It's not that hard to imagine that we could feed, house, care for, and provide a small stipend to authors, artists, etc. and also make their work output free to everyone who wants it. Does that require changing some other things? Absolutely. Would it be hard to convince people to try? Probably (I'm guessing HN crowd won't like this comment, considering it unreasonable.) Has it been a suggested way to organize society for almost 200 years with a long and well argued set of principles behind it? Sure enough!
pdonis 27d ago
The scientists who wrote the papers that Swartz downloaded were compensated, with the public's tax dollars. That should mean that we the public should now have free access to what we paid for. Unfortunately the government prefers to let private companies keep those papers behind paywalls.
- ajam1507 25d ago
  JSTOR isn't just full of publicly funded work.
xigoi 27d ago
How much money do you think the scientists who wrote the papers are getting from the access fees? (Hint: it’s the only number that stays the same when you multiply it by sometting.)

hk1337 27d ago

Agreed, to an extent, but that doesn't mean you can breach any barrier someone has in place preventing access, take it, and make it publicly available.

pdonis 27d ago
The information Swartz was downloading was scientific papers that we, the public, have already paid for with our tax dollars. The crime here is that the government allows JSTOR and other private companies to still hold those papers behind paywalls instead of releasing them into the public domain as they should have been.
- s1artibartfast 27d ago
  Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition.
  - pdonis 27d ago
    > Doesn't matter if the public funded it. The public didn't mandate or pay for the publication rights or access. So when your tax dollars pay for a scientist to do research, you don't think the papers that document that research should be public property? If scientists want to keep their research private, they should find private funding. Note that, as in my previous post, I said "should". If you mean there isn't explicit language to that effect in the grants, see further comments below. > The public might donate food to the poor. That doesn't give them the right to go into their house and rummage through their fridge. Invalid comparison. The scientific papers in question are not the personal property of the scientists. > Maybe there is a missed opportunity to require open access as a condition of public grant funding. IMO this should be the case, and it's an outrage that it's not, since it should be an obvious requirement for any research that our tax dollars pay for. > That doesn't change the fact that it is not a stipulated condition. Maybe that wasn't written into the grants explicitly, but that just means our government is (once again) failing to act in our best interests.