The Guerilla Open Access ManifestoAARON SWARTZ, OPEN ACCESS AND THE SHARING IMPERATIVEDELIVERED BY BEN HOCKENBERRY AT PHILOSOPHY DAY, ST. JOHN FISHER COLLEGE, 11/21/2013
Image from https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto
"We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.“(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)
Summarizing the Case Guest access to Library Databases through MIT’s Library
Batch download of what amounted to 4.8 million articles from JSTOR over the course of 3 months between 2010-2011; script “keepgrabbing.py”
JSTOR and MIT both took steps to block his laptop IP and MAC address
Computer hidden in a wiring closet, wired into the network and covered with a cardboard box
Caught accessing the laptop after covering face with a bicycle helmet to avoid camera capture
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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Who was Swartz? (in brief) Prodigy
Programmer
Scholar
Speaker
Activist/Hacktivist
Criminal?
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Image by Fred Benenson, http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/3111021669/
Libraries and Swartz Guest access policies are not unusual, nor is IP authentication
Some sharing and copying is allowed under copyright law: first sale, fair use, interlibrary loan, archival
License terms for electronic resources govern use beyond the law
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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What were his motivations?We don’t know.
Code and analyze the corpus
Seed a dark archive or an index
Share with the world
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Image by Fred Benenson, http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/3111021669/
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
“Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.”(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
“But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.”(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
"We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access."(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)
Libraries, Sharing and Open Access Libraries exist to share knowledge Gatekeeping or sharing? Libraries have engaged with OA to be on the latter side
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Source: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php
Concerns about Open Access Maintenance of access/archival
systems
Confusion over “archivable” versions and version of record
Rank & Tenure policies
Future publishing opportunities (“the book deal”)
Changing model of peer-review
Potential unauthorized or uncredited reuse of the material for commercial or other purposes
Author-pays model may lead to sham journals/publishers(i.e. Bohannon’s sting in Science, Bealls’ Predatory List)
…and many more
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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“Guerilla OA:”Legitimate OA may not be able to go far enough. Legal change is slow
Legal system supports publishers and content creators
Clandestine actors can “liberate” content that can’t otherwise be freed
Is this what Swartz wanted to do with JSTOR? We don’t know.
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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“On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”(Brand, 1985, p. 49)
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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Some QuestionsCould the legitimate Open Access movement have gotten JSTOR to provide access to more than 4.5 million articles, without this case?
JSTOR is a non-profit. What fallout from other, more commercially-oriented, publishers and vendors will follow?
Do OA advocates have the same goals as copyright infringers (pirates)?
Can libraries strike a balance between gatekeeping and sharing?
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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ReferencesBarday, S. A. (2008). Punitive Damages, Remunerated Research, and the Legal Profession. Stanford Law Review, 61(3), 711.
Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review? Science, 342(6154), 60–65. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60
Brand, S. (Ed.) (1985, May). “Keep designing:” How the information economy is being created and shaped by the hacker ethic. Whole Earth Review 46, p. 44-55. Retrieved from http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=2046
Feltren, E. (2013). Congratulations to the 2013 Recipients of the PAGI and Oakley Advocacy Awards. AALL Spectrum, 17, 8.
Kim, B. (2013, February 11). Aaron Swartz and Too-Comfortable Research Libraries. ACRL TechConnectBlog. Retrieved from http://acrl.ala.org/techconnect/?p=2823Klein, S. (2011, July 24). Aaron Swartz vs. United States. The Longest Now. Blog. Retrieved November 15, 2013, from https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2011/07/24/aaron-swartz-v-united-states/McDonald, A. and Cranor, L. (2008) The cost of reading privacy policies. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. Author’s version available at http://www.aleecia.com/authors-drafts/readingPolicyCost-AV.pdf
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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ReferencesNewsClickin (2013, January 19). Aaron Swartz: The First Martyr of the Free Information Movement. (2013). Retrieved November 14, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg87SR0TRw4
Schwartz, J. (2009, February 13). An Effort to Upgrade a Court Archive System to Free and Easy. The New York Times, p. A16. New York.
Social Science Research Council (2011, March). Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. Retrieved from http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-report/.
Stamos, A. (2013, January 12). The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s “Crime.” Unhandled Exception. Blog. Retrieved from http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/
Swartz, A. (2008). Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Retrieved from http://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto
See also:
The Aaron Swartz collection on the Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/aaronsw
JSTOR. (July 30, 2013). JSTOR Evidence in United States vs. Aaron Swartz. Retrieved from http://docs.jstor.org/
The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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