Excelente texto. Difícil não concordar com o autor. 2012/3/2 Arthur Buchsbaum <arthurrovabu-log...@yahoo.com.br>
> *The shutdown of library.nu is creating a virtual showdown between > would-be learners and the publishing industry.* > > ** ** > > *Los Angeles, CA –* The shutdown of library.nu doesn’t bode well for > those who wish to learn, but can’t afford to pay for textbooks.**** > > Last week a website called “library.nu” disappeared. A coalition of > international scholarly publishers accused the site of piracy and convinced > a judge in Munich to shut it down. Library.nu (formerly Gigapedia) had > offered, if the reports are to be believed, between 400,000 and a million > digital books for free. **** > > And not just any books - not romance novels or the latest best-sellers - > but scholarly books: textbooks, secondary treatises, obscure monographs, > biographical analyses, technical manuals, collections of cutting-edge > research in engineering, mathematics, biology, social science and > humanities.**** > > The texts ranged from so-called "orphan works" (out-of-print, but still > copyrighted) to recent issues; from poorly scanned to expertly ripped; from > English to German to French to Spanish to Russian, with the occasional > Japanese or Chinese text. It was a remarkable effort of collective > connoisseurship. Even the pornography was scholarly: guidebooks and > scholarly books about the pornography industry. For a criminal underground > site to be mercifully free of pornography must alone count as a triumph of > civilisation.**** > > To the publishing industry, this event was a victory in the campaign to > bring the unruly internet under some much-needed discipline. To many other > people - namely the users of the site - it was met with anger, sadness and > fatalism. But who were these sad criminals, these barbarians at the gates > ready to bring our information economy to its knees? **** > > They are students and scholars, from every corner of the planet.**** > > ** ** > > *Pirating to learn* > > “The world, it should not come as a surprise, is filled with people who > want desperately to learn.”**** > > The world, it should not come as a surprise, is filled with people who > want desperately to learn. This is what our world should be filled with. > This is what scholars work hard to create: a world of reading, learning, > thinking and scholarship. The users of library.nu were would-be scholars: > those in the outer atmosphere of learning who wanted to know, argue, > dispute, experiment and write just as those in the universities do.**** > > Maybe they were students once, but went on to find jobs and found > families. We made them in some cases - we gave them a four-year taste of > the life of the mind before sending them on their way with unsupportable > loans. In other cases, they made themselves, by hook or by crook.**** > > So what does the shutdown of library.nu mean? The publishers think it is > a great success in the war on piracy; that it will lead to more revenue and > more control over who buys what, if not who reads what. The pirates - the > people who create and run such sites - think that shutting down > library.nuwill only lead to a thousand more sites, stronger and better than > before. > **** > > But both are missing the point: the global demand for learning and > scholarship is not being met by the contemporary publishing industry. It > cannot be, not with the current business models and the prices. The users > of library.nu - these barbarians at the gate of the publishing industry > and the university - are legion.**** > > They live all over the world, but especially in Latin and South America, > in China, in Eastern Europe, in Africa and in India. It's hard to get > accurate numbers, but any perusal of the tweets mentioning library.nu or > the comments on blog posts about it reveal that the main users of the site > are the global middle class. They are not the truly poor, they are not > slum-denizens or rural poor - but nonetheless they do not have much money. > They are the real 99 per cent (as compared to the Euro-American 1 per cent). > **** > > They may be scientists or scholars themselves: some work in schools, > universities or corporations, others are doubly outside of the elite > learned class - jobholders whose desire to learn is and will only ever be > an avocation. They are a global market engaged in what we in the elite > institutions of the world are otherwise telling them to do all the time: > educate yourself; become scholars and thinkers; read and think for > yourselves; bring civilisation, development and modernity to your people.* > *** > > ** ** > > *Sharing is caring* > > Library.nu was making that learning possible where publishers have not. It > made a good show of being a “book review” site – it was called > library.nuafter all, and not “ > bookstore.nu”. It was not cluttered with advertisements, nor did it > “suggest” other books constantly. It gave straight answers to > straightforward searches, and provided user reviews of the 400,000 or more > books in the database.**** > > It was only the fact that library.nu included a link to another site > (“sharehosting” sites like ifile.it, megaupload.com, or mediafire.com) > containing the complete version of a digital text that brought library.nuinto > the realm of what passes for crime these days. > **** > > But the legality of library.nu is also not the issue: trading in scanned, > leaked or even properly purchased versions of digital books is thoroughly > illegal. This is so much the case that it can't be long before reading a > book – making an unauthorised copy in your brain – is also made illegal. * > *** > > But library.nu shared books; it did not sell them. If it made any money, > it was not from the texts themselves, but from advertising revenue. As with > Napster in 1999, library.nu was facilitating discovery: the ability to > search deeper and deeper into the musical or scholarly tastes fellow humans > and to discover their connections that no recommendation algorithm will > ever be able to make. In their effort to control this market, publishers > alongside the movie and music industry have been effectively criminalising > sharing, learning and creating – not stealing.**** > > Users of library.nu did not have to upload texts to the site in order to > use it, but they were rewarded if they did. There were formal rules (and > informal ones, to be sure), concerning how one might “level up” in the > library.nu community. The site developed as websites do, adding features > here and there, and obviously expanding its infrastructure as necessary. > The administrators of the site maintained absolute control over who could > participate and who could not – no doubt in order to protect the site from > skulking FBI agents and enthusiastic newbies alike.**** > > Even a casual observer could have seen that the frequent changes to the > site were the effects of the cat-and-mouse game underway as law authorities > and publishers sought to understand and eventually seek legal action > against this community. In the end, it was only by donating to the site > that law authorities discovered the real people behind the site - pirates > too have PayPal accounts.**** > > ** ** > > *Shutting down learning* > > The winter of 2012 has seen a series of assaults on file-sharing sites in > the wake of the failed SOPA and PIPA legislation. Mega-upload.com (the > brainchild of eccentric master pirate Kim Dotcom - he legally changed his > name in 2005) was seized by the US Department of Justice; torrent site > btjunkie.com voluntarily closed down for fear of litigation.**** > > In the last few days before they closed for good, library.nu winked in > and out of existence, finally (and ironically), displayed a page saying > "this domain has been revoked by .nu domain" (the island nation of Niue). > It prominently displays a link to a book (on Amazon!) called Blue > Latitudes, about the voyage of Captain Cook. A story about that other kind > of pirate branches off here.**** > > So what does the shutdown of library.nu mean? One thing it means is that > these barbarians - these pirates who are also scholars - are angry. We > scholars have long been singing the praises of education, learning, mutual > aid and the virtues of getting a good degree. We scholars have been telling > the world of desperate learners to do just what they are doing, if not in > so many terms. **** > > So there are a lot of angry young middle-class learners in the world this > month. Some are existentially angry about the injustice of this system, > some are pragmatically angry they must now spend $100 – if they even have > that much – on a textbook instead of on themselves or their friends.**** > > All of them are angry that what looked to everyone like the new horizon of > learning - and the promise of the vaunted new digital economy – has just > disappeared behind the dark eclipse of a Munich judge’s cease and desist > order.**** > > Writers and scholars in Europe and the US are complicit in the shutdown. > The publishing companies are protecting themselves and their profits, but > they do so with the assent, if not the active support, of those who still > depend on them. They are protecting us – we scholars – or so they say. > These barbarians – these desperate learners – are stealing our property and > should be made to pay for it.**** > > ** ** > > *Profiteering* > > In reality, however, the scholarly publishing industry has entered a phase > like the one the pharmaceutical industry entered in the 1990s, when > life-saving AIDS medicines were deliberately restricted to protect the > interests of pharmaceutical companies' patents and profits. **** > > The comparison is perhaps inflammatory; after all, scholarly monographs > are life-saving in only the most distant and abstract sense, but the > situation is - legally speaking - nearly identical. Library.nu is not > unlike those clever – and also illegal – local corporations in India and > Africa who created generic versions of AIDS medicines.**** > > Why doesn't the publishing industry want these consumers? For one thing, > the US and European book-buying libraries have been willing pay the prices > necessary to keep the industry happy – and not just happy, in many cases > obscenely profitable.**** > > Rather than provide our work at cheap enough prices that anyone in the > world might purchase, they have taken the opposite route – making the > prices higher and higher until only very rich institutions can afford them. > Scholarly publishers have made the trade-off between offering a very low > price to a very large market or a very high price to a very small market.* > *** > > But here is the rub: books and their scholars are the losers in this > trade-off - especially cutting edge research from the best institutions in > the world. The publishing industry we have today cannot – or will not – > deliver our books to this enormous global market of people who desperately > want to read them.**** > > Instead, they print a handful of copies – less than 100, often – and sell > them to libraries for hundreds of dollars each. When they do offer digital > versions, they are so wrapped up in restrictions and encumbrances and > licencing terms as to make using them supremely frustrating. **** > > To make matters worse, our university libraries can no longer afford to > buy these books and journals; and our few bookstores are no longer willing > to carry them. So the result is that most of our best scholarship is being > shot into some publisher's black hole where it will never escape. That is, > until library.nu and its successors make it available. **** > > What these sites represent most clearly is a viable route towards > education and learning for vast numbers of people around the world. The > question it raises is: on which side of this battle do European and > American scholars want to be?**** > > ** ** > > Christopher M. Kelty is an Associate Professor of Information Studies and > Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.**** > > He is the author of “Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software”. > **** > > The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not > necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.**** > > ** ** > -- ================================================================== Adolfo Neto Assistant Professor - Federal University of Technology, Paraná Web: http://www.dainf.ct.utfpr.edu.br/~adolfo Twitter: http://twitter.com/adolfont Mestrado em Computação Aplicada: http://www.ppgca.ct.utfpr.edu.br ================================================================== -------------------------------------------- Q: Why is this email three sentences or less? 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