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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Swedish ISP punishes Elsevier for forcing it to block Sci-Hub by also blocking Elsevier
[...] Unfortunately for Swedes and for science, the Swedish Patent and Market Court (which never met a copyright overreach it didn't love) upheld the order, and Bahnhof, a small ISP with limited resources, decided not to appeal (a bigger, richer ISP had just lost a similar appeal).
Instead, Bahnhof now blocks attempts to visit Sci-Hub domains, and Elsevier.com, redirecting attempts to visit Elsevier to a page explaining how Elsevier's sleaze and bullying have allowed it to monopolize scientific publishing, paywalling publicly funded science that is selected, reviewed and edited by volunteers who mostly work for publicly funded institutions.
To as[sic] icing on this revenge-flavored cake, Bahnhof also detects attempts to visit its own site from the Patent and Market Court and redirects them to a page explaining that since the Patent and Market Court believes that parts of the web should be blocked, Bahnhof is blocking the court's access to its part of the web.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:42AM (5 children)
Or we could criminalize the privatization of any and all research that received even a dollar of government funding. Public funds = public information. That doesn't mean the organizations who did the research can't profit from it (e.g., patents and formula copyrights), but the research and results should be immediately belong in the public domain.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:46AM (1 child)
Why would you want to live in a world in which you give the Men with Guns so much power?
That's just crazy.
How about you stop stealing money from people in the first place?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @12:25PM
What? Stop stealing money? Then how am I supposed to pay the Men with Guns?
Look, the first rule of fight club is steal money and give it to the guys with the guns. After that nothing else matters.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @09:51AM (2 children)
It would almost certainly be a case of Civil and not Criminal law if all research that recieved public funds were required to be entered into the Public Domain. Further, in the Pulbic Domain, anyone would be free to privatize and profit from the research, just like all the pulbishers of public domain books do. Also, it strikes me as odd to require the research papers to be Public Domain, but then allow patenting of the research. Public funding should be like a cancer to profiteers and reserved for the General Good.
(I believe what you are referring to is Free or Open Access, rather than Public Domain)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @12:22PM
Not if a federal law criminalizing this behavior was passed that had a minimum sentencing requirement that included jail time.
If "public domain" is the wrong term then pick another one that means "available to one and all". It should be available to everyone. Plus, it could/should/would be on a government research website available to one and all.
(Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Monday November 05 2018, @07:10PM
Patenting would just mean that the owner of the patent would have a limited-time monopoly on products made from patented aspects of the research. Patents are public information anyway. A large part of the purpose of research is to increase the general store of knowledge, and that is not reduced by allowing patents based on the knowledge gained from the funded research.
The government might insist, as part of the terms of the funding, that the government share in the monetary gains of the patent, or that no patent be applied for.