Things the Collective Should Do: Open Academic Web Journal

I'm suggesting here a free-content, openly accessible online repository where researchers, professors, and students publish scientific journal articles for peer review and wide distribution.

This website allows scientific research papers to be published by qualified academicians. The articles can be freely read and peer-reviewed online. Articles are translated into other languages so that they can be read worldwide. A system of of moderation provides a meritocratic means of awarding prestige and press based on quality. An accompanying print journal is provided pro bono or at nominal cost to institutions. To increase the prestige of the journal/repository, it is marketed as a trustable, progressive, intelligent institution, and content is carefully reviewed.

The current scientific publication industry relies on established branding of respectable journals and the 'publish or perish' dynamic to keep it afloat. Authors often have to pay for their articles to be published in print-bound journals, which are then sold at a high price to academic institutions. At best the publishing industry contributes little of value to the system, and at worst prevents most people from accessing information that could be useful in the hands of the general public. In essence, the current system lacks utility in spreading scientific knowledge and neither apportions prestige fairly, nor distributes knowledge widely.

Minds around the world would benefit greatly, as the results of studies would be available internationally in many different languages. Universities and authors would also benefit because they are now able to publish and access papers at lower cost. Science as a whole would benefit due to the increased volume and visibility of papers published. Because of the greater number of eyes on the articles and the increased ease of peer review, communicative openness and the scientific method would benefit.

In order to be successful, the open web journal would require buy-in from academic institutions and scientific readers. A combination of aggressive marketing and branding to entice article submissions will facilitate presenting the site as a respectable, reliable source of information. We will need to develop the website's software, decide how the site is run and edited organizationally (peer review and editing will play a huge part)

The overall progress of science will be assisted, because knowledge will be exchanged more freely. People who would otherwise not have the opportunity to read current scientific literature will have the chance to be inspired as well as educated by it. Competing with current journal models may persuade existing publishers to become more free in an economic and cultural sense. Researchers will have a website which will both distribute their knowledge to the world and grant them recognition for their work - without charging admission. Counting readers or articles would be simple metrics. Measuring changes in research job satisfaction, number of articles published worldwide, or cost of subscriptions to existing print journals would tell other sides of the story.

More IP Polemic

Aside from the aforementioned pragmatic rejection of IP that I and many others hold, there exists a (currently very unpopular) idealistic aversion to it. The argument states that there is no way to 'own' ideas. Given that we've legislated a lot of other intangibles into existence (citizenship, time, etc) I'm not doubting our theoretical ability to legislate the ownership of information. I'm not even asserting that information wants to be free, though the statement has its merits. I'm just very, very skeptical of the idea that information can belong to a person.

For one, unlike other types of property information isn't even close to a scarce good. Once it exists, it can be replicated over and over for free, being built upon in any number of ways. To have exclusive ownership of something infinitely replicable seems beyond human ability.

Once a person invents something - a joke, a meme, a new and useful process - I can agree that they're the sole holder and proprietor of every iota of that idea. But once it's outside the mind of that person, I'd be forced to argue that it belongs equally to everyone who witnesses it. They've already multiplied it in their mind, potentially forever, and can't disown it for any amount of money or effort. Are they just borrowing it? If they don't own the copy in their mind, does the creator (or whoever the creator sold the idea to) own that region of their thoughts, or just the observer's rights to share it?

The idea strikes me as preposterous on a really basic level. Please remember that I'm thinking of this as someone who traffics in information for a living, at let me know where I'm differing from a thought-out schema of our ability to own data.

Intellectual Property

IANAL (I am not a lawyer.)

I'm a proud cog in the information economy, and I make my living on manufacturing information. We all buy and sell information every day. The volume of information going around is rapidly increasing as time progresses, and I think it's clear that we don't have a good system for regulating the information economy.

On a legislative level, we currently have several failed systems for the regulation of intellectual property:

- There is no universal or global acknowledgment of intellectual property, and most systems of regulation simply break when the information leaves its creator's jurisdiction. This leads to copyright being nearly meaningless in certain countries where IP is not recognized, not enforced, or neither.
- 'Fair use' in the United States is at best a cruel joke, and protects almost no one. The segment most unable to make fair use of a product are professional content creators, whose producers are reluctant to take any risk of costly litigation.
- Users are an enormous, slow-moving target for IP owners seeking legal recourse, and cannot muster even a token defense against whatever claims are brought against them. If not for groups like the EFF, few IP suits against end users would ever go beyond settlement.
- The largest content owners and producers (along with as umbrella industry groups and PACs) take it upon themselves to sponsor politicians friendly to their interests, resulting in well-funded campaigns for any legislators willing to cooperate with them.
- The United States Patent and Trade Office is an outdated, Kafkaesque organization with no semblance of understanding and a completely broken system of patenting. This is more arguable when one is discussing non-software patents; due to a gap in understanding between those who write or patent software and those who approve and adjudicate patents, the system currently in place for patenting software is rife with abuse (even according to many owners of software patents).

On a physical level, mechanisms so far intended to prevent violation of intellectual property rights have done little more than decrease the quality of products, while increasing the cost to manufacture them.

- To date, no system of DRM-laden content has ever shown promise in avoiding being subverted, gamed, or bypassed. In the arms race between secure distribution schemes and the holders of encrypted data, the odds will always be stacked clearly in the favor of unlocking information.
- Even a theoretically secure system is still entirely susceptible to transcoding or transcription. Regardless of how difficult it is to mass-distribute a strongly encrypted, watermarked, time-expiring piece of information, if the data is viewable by a human it is likely copyable, often perfectly, to another medium.
- Streaming, proprietary, or encryption-bloated data, often infused with the mandatory viewing of warnings about redistribution, is inherently less usable and much less desirable (to varying degrees) than content distributed otherwise.

Why is it so hard to regulate our god-given rights to information? Why should we be 'punished' for sharing information with the world?