*shakes fist at academic paywalls*

[bunn]

How many people really want to read this article I desire about crime in Roman Egypt, published 1963 - and are able to do so?  I'm guessing maybe 6, but I think that might even be an overestimate.  And there isn't even a way to pay an exorbitant fee and get access to the bloody thing!   I know it is there, but it might as well be sealed inside a capsule on the bloody Moon.

I was reading a 'success story' article today about someone using Google Adsense to successfully monetise content, and it occurs to me that rather than stick all these bloody paywalls everywhere and make it next to impossible to get through the sodding things, it might be a better thing for everyone involved if they just bunged them up - past a certain date in the past maybe - as freeware on cheap hosting, and ran a really good properly structured set of ad campaigns against them.

Is it over-suspicious to suspect that universities wouldn't like this as it might mean people actually learning stuff and drawing conclusions without their expensive mediation...?  Or is is just OMG, advertising!  That's like... TRADE!  OH THE HORROR!!!  We'll be knighting the grandchildren of mill-owners next and then where will we be?

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Here, the publishers are benefiting from laws which (in terms of copyright extension) were intended to benefit authors' heirs. Trends in the late nineteenth century led publishers to stop buying copyrights outright from authors and instead start offering them advances and royalties, thereby sharing the risks. The extension of the copyright period to seventy-five years in the academic journal sector, of course, is of little benefit to the authors who weren't paid in the first place.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'd still like to know how and where and when this was extended to restrict virtual borrowing. Neuromancer's comment above seems to suggest that copyright law restricts digitisation for library use: OK, understand that but clearly that's not the whole story, because digitised copies of a great deal of stuff exist on servers that are technically part of the wider internet, to which access is artificially restricted.

Did I miss the introduction of a paywall law, or is this caselaw?

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I've no idea, for as far as I know there is no restriction on digitisation for library use of theses, as long as the consent of the author is secured. I have signed a form myself, and Oxford are certainly keen on making research undertaken as part of higher degree work freely available.