Information Liberation
,----[ Quote ]
| Other than in the realm of life-saving medicine, why should any of this
| matter to nonacademics? Well, for one thing, barriers to the spread of
| information are bad for capitalism. The dissemination of knowledge is almost
| as crucial as the production of it for the creation of wealth, and knowledge
| (like people) can't reproduce in isolation. It's easy to scoff at the rise of
| Madonna studies and other risible academic excrescences, but a flood of truly
| important research pours from campuses every day. The infrastructure that
| produces this work is surely one of America's greatest competitive
| advantages.
|
| In fact, open access might help to moderate some of the worst forms of
| academic hokum, if only by holding them up to the light of day -- and perhaps
| by making taxpayers, parents and college donors more careful about where they
| send their money. Entering the realm of delirium for a moment, one can even
| imagine public exposure encouraging professors in the humanities and social
| sciences to write in plain English.
|
| Keeping knowledge bottled up is also bad for the world's poor; indeed,
| opening up the research produced on America's campuses via the Internet is
| probably among the most cost-effective ways of helping underdeveloped
| countries rise from poverty. Closer to home, open access to scholarly work
| via the Internet would help counteract the plague of plagiarism that the
| Internet itself has abetted. Anyone suspecting a scholar of such chicanery
| could search for a phrase or two in Google and see if somebody else's work
| turns up with the same unusual text string.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120486540450119149.html
Related:
1.8 million rulings online -- and free
,----[ Quote ]
| Sebastopol man posts half-century's worth of court decisions which could
| shake up $5 billion legal publishing industry
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http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080213/NEWS/802130315/1036/BUSINESS01
Berkman Center and CALI Partner to Create New Legal Education Resource
,----[ Quote ]
| “We are looking forward to renewing a fruitful relationship with Harvard Law
| School through the Legal Education Commons project, which will provide
| innovative tools and access to open-licensed course materials to our more
| than 200 member law schools” said CALI Executive Director John Mayer.
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http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/newsroom/pressreleases/berkman_center_and_cali_partner_to_create_new_legal_education_resource
Harvard Research to Be Free Online
,----[ Quote ]
| Harvard University will soon begin posting research and articles produced by
| its faculty on the Internet free of charge.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14arts-HARVARDRESEA_BRF.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
A Quest to Get More Court Rulings Online, and Free
,----[ Quote ]
| The domination of two legal research services over the publication of federal
| and state court decisions is being challenged by an Internet gadfly who has
| embarked on an ambitious project to make more than 10 million pages of case
| law available free online.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/technology/20westlaw.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Announcing the Open Library
,----[ Quote ]
| Early this year, when I left my job at Wired Digital, I thought I could look
| forward to months of lounging around San Francisco, reading books on the
| beach and drinking fine champagne and eating foie gras. Then I got a phone
| call. Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive was thinking of pursuing a
| project that I'd been trying to do literally for years.
|
| [...]
|
| So today I'm extraordinarily proud to announce the Open Library project. Our
| goal is to build the world's greatest library,
`----
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/openlibrary
Wikipedia Founder Joins EC Open Access Campaign
,----[ Quote ]
| Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said he signed a petition calling
| on the European Commission to give the public open access to
| taxpayer-funded scientific research because it was "simple and
| obvious" that the public should have access to research they
| had funded. "Public money should result in public benefit,"
| he added.
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http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/56443.html
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