Don Marti

Wed 17 May 2006 05:02:58 PM PDT

MLP: question, copyright, work

Good Question of the day: "Personally I'm pissed and feel like I've bought myself into a lifetime of slavery to Apple just to hear my music. I've never heard anything at all about this before. I never knew there was any vague sense of controversy about the iPod (because there's not). Why not? What does it take to get something like this off the pages that people interested in technical things read and onto pages for people that just want to buy something and use it?"

The Copy/South Research Group has just issued a new report on the effects of copyright on Southern countries. Fortunately, it's not all gloom and TRIPS; there's a more tractable problem covered on page 115: academic publications.

The proprietary journal publishers don't just not pay for articles. Some journals even make authors pay page charges, and journal editorial boards are research scientists who work unpaid.

Forget the University of California paying bureaucrats a few extra million here or there. The true shame of US universities is that their professors are participating in locking up their research, and that of others, under the control of a few corporations that only subtract value.

Anyway, if you feel a publication coming on, go PLOS, get cited, and be a hero.

In other news, Ryan Carson works four days a week.