

Colombian Student Faces Prison Charges for Sharing an Academic Article Online - beshrkayali
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/colombian-student-faces-prison-charges-sharing-academic-article-online

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x1798DE
What surprises me the most is that this came from the _author_ of the paper,
not the publisher. In my experience, authors don't see any kind of royalties
from any publication fees, and generally there are even fees (often
significant ones) associated with having your work published in a journal.
Generally, if you're the author of a given paper, you'd _prefer_ if your paper
were published for everyone to read (even beyond the intangibles, this could
increase citation count), whereas the publisher is the one with an incentive
to keep it gated. In fact, some journals are now offering creative commons
licensing as an upsell - pay a certain amount of money and there's no paywall
on this article.

This EFF article may be playing a bit fast-and-loose with the term "article",
though. I'm seeing something here about how it was actually someone's thesis,
and that the author was concerned that the person who put it on Scribd did so
in an attempt to profit off of some sort of system of fees. It's not clear to
me why it would go as far as prosecution, though, unless issuing a takedown
request necessitates full criminal prosecution...

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knd775
_unless issuing a takedown request necessitates full criminal prosecution_

It is my understanding, however, that the article has been taken down.

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dreamweapon
So in a country that has seen tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings in
recent decades, not to mention cases of "torture, rape, incineration,
decapitation and mutilation with chainsaws or machetes of dozens of their
victims at a time, affecting civilians, women and children" (according to
sources quoted by WP) -- the vast majority of which have never been
prosecuted, and most likely never will be -- they're going to string this guy
up for... sharing a PDF?

And for the sake of... a "free trade" agreement?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitarism_in_Colombia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitarism_in_Colombia)

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Shorel
Some people here uphold any law as something eternal and unchangeable, and
above all criticisms. I think it has something to do with the Spaniards and
their Catholicism, and the many Jesuit high schools.

At least that's what my Facebook stream of comments about some recent case
involving Bogotá's mayor makes me perceive.

There's a huge divide between city people with all their laws and the contempt
for provincial people, and the actual provincial people, the ones who suffer
from guerrillas and paramilitaries just for trying to own some agricultural
land.

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knd775
My stance on this is that while he did do something "wrong", this should not
be something that he gets in signifigant trouble over.

He did post someone's work to the Internet, but seriously? Prison would be
absolutely ridiculous for something like this.

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jostmey
Do we want to live in an open society or a gated one?

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byandyphillips
Aaron Swartz 2.0

