[WSIS CS-Plenary] ITID's The World Summit in Reflection

[Gurstein, Michael]

Hmmm.

But the issue of course, is that its not "their" i.e. MIT's material...
Rather it is material which scholars have given (via copyright) to MIT
and which MIT is then in the business of selling back to them (via their
institution's library budgets).  And in addition the materials
themselves have been in many cases generated through the use of public
funds (e.g. university salaries or publicly funded research grants). 

So publicly supported institutions are thus expected to pay for publicly
funded materials freely given to a private institution. (Anybody else
see something slightly askew with that picture?)

I personally, have decided to follow Lawrence Lessig's lead and only
publish my academic writing in Open Archive journals which make their
materials freely available to all via the net.

Mike Gurstein

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
School of Management 
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Editor-in-Chief Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net
Honorary Professor: Central Queensland University, Queensland, AU
Senior Scholar: Claremont Information Technology Institute, Claremont
University, California, USA
Honorary Research Scholar: Centre for Community Networking Research,
Monash University, AU
Chair: Community Informatics Research Network http://www.ciresearch.net
 

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On
Behalf Of Ronald Koven
Sent: April 6, 2005 6:58 PM
To: INTERNET:plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] ITID's The World Summit in Reflection


Dear Francis --

MIT is a private entity. 

It has every right to attempt to generate revenue by selling its
materials.


There is no requirement, legal or moral, that organizations go bankrupt
to meet your view that everything should be free and that nobody should
be allowed to make a living from his/her work.

The ultimate logic of your position is that we'll all be totally
dependent on government handouts.

And where will that leave our freedoms ?

Best, Rony Koven

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