Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers - Ars Technica

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers - Ars Technica 

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers A study provides evidence that file sharing takes place with some very specialized media: the research papers published in scientific journals. By John Timmer | Last updated October 29, 2009 6:15 AM CT

The ease with which information can be spread through the Internet has exacerbated tensions among those who pay for, conduct, and publish scientific research. Many journals still require subscription or per-article payments for access to the research they publish, which often leaves the public, who funds a significant percentage of the research, on the wrong side of a pay wall. So far, however, there's been little evidence that the public has been interested enough in research to engage in the sort of widespread file-sharing that plague other content industries. But a new study suggests that may just be because nobody's looked very carefully.

The study, which was spotted by TechDirt, appears in an open-access journal, so anyone can read its entire contents. It describes the sharing of over 5,000 research papers on a site frequented by medical professionals, and the formal community rules that governed the exchange.

During the six months in 2008 that the author tracked the activity on the site, which was a discussion board focused on medical fields, it had over 125,000 registered users. Anyone could start an account, but many of the fora were focused on specific issues, such as those faced by nurses and residents. In addition to those, however, there was a section called the Electronic Library that contained a forum called "Databases & Journals—Requests and Enquiries."

Up to three times a day, users were allowed to submit a request for a published research article, accompanied by a link to the free abstract hosted at the journal's website. Other users would then download the full article and host it somewhere, providing a link in the discussion. If everything was set up properly, the site would track the number of downloads.

Over the course of six months, over 6,500 articles were requested, and over 80 percent of those requests were successfully filled. The articles received a mean of 4.47 views, with one attracting 177 downloads. The author found that the requests roughly paralleled the journal's impact factors, with Nature and Science coming out on top, followed by more specialized medical journals. Figuring an average cost of $30 a download (the price requested by many journals), the publishing industry was potentially losing $1.4 million a year due to the site, although it's unlikely that many of the downloaders would have actually exercised their option to buy an article.

According to the author, the site (which is never named) went inactive in early 2009, although its contents were indexed via Google prior to that point.

The author considers this behavior in the context of the Open Access debate, which has played out in Congress and research institutions. He also terms the file sharing behavior among people involved in the medical profession "ethically dubious," given it involves the distribution of copyrighted material.

There is, however, an alternate way of viewing this that the author doesn't discuss: at least some medical professionals are apparently unable to obtain the publications they feel are needed for their training or practice; given their job responsibilities, it seems unethical to withhold these materials.

In addition, it's worth noting that, although this sort of informal sharing would be obviated if all research was open access, it has a very different history from the formal open access movement. For many years, it was traditional for anyone publishing a paper to order a stack of what were termed "reprints"—essentially the journal article without the rest of the journal's contents—from the publisher, in order to share with colleagues or anyone who was interested, but did not have access to the journal. With the advent of digital publishing, this sort of service shifted to the emailing of PDFs—in a lot of ways, the file sharing seen here could be viewed as the next logical step in this publication sharing process.

In any case, the amount of sharing that goes on is undoubtedly much larger than the file exchanges observed in the study. Many authors are now choosing to simply place articles where anyone can find them, either ahead of print at places like the arXiv, or after, on their university's servers. Offers to share paywalled articles also occur in public forums that aren't dedicated to this exchange, at least based on some of the comments attached to Ars' science articles.

Many publishers are readily adapting to and, in some cases, embracing the increased demands for public access to research results. But there remain a number who are resisting the trend. The study suggests that publishers might do well to adopt some sort of formalized access system, or they may end up facing a growth in the sites that encourage the same sort of sharing that has caused the movie and film industries so much indigestion.

The Internet Journal of Medical Informatics, 2009. DOI unavailable.

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers - Ars Technica

Copyrights & Campaigns: No settlement in Jammie Thomas case; retrial set for June 15 in peer-to-peer case

Copyrights & Campaigns: No settlement in Jammie Thomas case; retrial set for June 15 in peer-to-peer case 

No settlement in Jammie Thomas case; retrial set for June 15 in peer-to-peer case

Back to Duluth!
The eyes of the copyright world will once again be focused on that northern Minnesota burg after a court-ordered settlement conference failed to resolve the Jammie Thomas peer-to-peer infringement case -- the only one of the approximately 30,000 cases filed by the labels against individual p2p users that has actually gone to trial so far.
Reports Wired:

Thomas’ lawyer, Brian Toder, and RIAA lawyers met privately in a Minnesota federal court for two hours haggling over the case. No conclusion was reached (.pdf). Thomas has maintained she would never settle. A retrial is set for June 15.

“What they wanted to do, my client did not want to do,” Toder said in a telephone interview. He declined to disclose the RIAA’s financial demands.

The first Thomas trial ended in late 2007 with a verdict for the plaintiffs and a $222,000 statutory damages award against Thomas for infringing 24 songs. Thomas claimed that a mysterious lurker had used her wireless network to download the songs, but, as Wired deadpanned at the time:

Expert testimony from an RIAA witness...showed that a wireless router was not used, casting doubt on her defense that a hacker lurking outside her apartment window with a laptop might have framed her, he said.

One juror called Thomas a "liar" in a post-verdict press interview, and 2 wanted to impose maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work before the jury settled on the figure of $9,250. However, the court threw out the entire verdict after determining that his jury instruction on the so-called "making available" theory of liability was foreclosed by Eighth Circuit precedent.
June could be an awfully busy month for the labels' litigators; Judge Nancy Gertner in the Joel Tenenbaum case has told the parties to expect trial date as early as late June, though I suspect that delays produced by the webcast imbroglio will necessitate pushing that out.

Copyrights & Campaigns: No settlement in Jammie Thomas case; retrial set for June 15 in peer-to-peer case

With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com

With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com 

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web

• By MOTOKO RICH

Published: May 11, 2009

Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”

 

Cory Doctorow offers some free electronic versions of his books.

Ursula K. Le Guin was irked to find copies of her work online.

Neither Ms. Le Guin nor her publisher had authorized the electronic editions. To Ms. Le Guin, it was a rude introduction to the quietly proliferating problem of digital piracy in the literary world. “I thought, who do these people think they are?” Ms. Le Guin said. “Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?”

This would all sound familiar to filmmakers and musicians who fought similar battles — with varying degrees of success — over the last decade. But to authors and their publishers in the age of Kindle, it’s new and frightening territory.

For a while now, determined readers have been able to sniff out errant digital copies of titles as varied as the “Harry Potter” series and best sellers by Stephen King and John Grisham. But some publishers say the problem has ballooned in recent months as an expanding appetite for e-books has spawned a bumper crop of pirated editions on Web sites like Scribd and Wattpad, and on file-sharing services like RapidShare and MediaFire.

“It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.”

John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher that also issues the “Dummies” series, employs three full-time staff members to trawl for unauthorized copies. Gary M. Rinck, general counsel, said that in the last month, the company had sent notices on more than 5,000 titles — five times more than a year ago — asking various sites to take down digital versions of Wiley’s books.

“It’s a game of Whac-a-Mole,” said Russell Davis, an author and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a trade association that helps authors pursue digital pirates. “You knock one down and five more spring up.”

Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, which invite users to upload documents like college theses and self-published novels, have been the target of industry grumbling in recent weeks, as illegal reproductions of popular titles have turned up on them. Trip Adler, chief executive of Scribd, said it was his “gut feeling” that unauthorized editions represented only a small fraction of the site’s content.

Both sites say they immediately remove illegally posted books once notified of them. The companies have also installed filters to identify copyrighted work when it is uploaded. “We are working very hard to keep unauthorized content off the site,” Mr. Adler said.

Several publishers declined to comment on the issue, fearing the attention might inspire more theft. For now, electronic piracy of books does not seem as widespread as what hit the music world, when file-sharing services like Napster threatened to take down the whole industry.

Publishers and authors say they can learn from their peers in music, who alienated fans by using the courts aggressively to go after college students and Napster before it converted to a legitimate online store.

“If iTunes started three years earlier, I’m not sure how big Napster and the subsequent piratical environments would have been, because people would have been in the habit of legitimately purchasing at pricing that wasn’t considered pernicious,” said Richard Sarnoff, a chairman of Bertelsmann, which owns Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer titles.

Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What’s more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version.

Now, with publishers producing more digital editions, it is potentially easier for hackers to copy files. And the growing popularity of electronic reading devices like the Kindle from Amazon or the Reader from Sony make it easier to read in digital form. Many of the unauthorized editions are uploaded as PDFs, which can be easily e-mailed to a Kindle or the Sony device.

An example of copyrighted material on Scribd recently included a digital version of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” a collection of fairy tales by J. K. Rowling. One commenter, posting as vicious-9690, wrote “thx for posting it up ur like the robinhood of ebooks.”

For some writers, tracking down illegal e-books is simply not worth it.

“The question is, how much time and energy do I want to spend chasing these guys,” Stephen King wrote in an e-mail message. “And to what end? My sense is that most of them live in basements floored with carpeting remnants, living on Funions and discount beer.”

Book sales are down significantly, and publishers say it is difficult to determine whether electronic piracy is denting sales. Some of the most frequently uploaded books, like the “Twilight” series, are also huge best sellers.

Some authors say they just want to protect the principle of compensating writers. “I don’t ask to get rich off this stuff,” said Harlan Ellison, an author and screenwriter. “I just ask to be paid.”

Nine years ago, Mr. Ellison sued Internet service providers for failing to stop a user from posting four of his stories to an online newsgroup. Since settling that suit, he has pursued more than 240 people who have posted his work to the Internet without permission. “If you put your hand in my pocket, you’ll drag back six inches of bloody stump,” he said.

Others view digital piracy as a way for new readers to discover writers. Cory Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel “Little Brother” spent seven weeks on the New York Times children’s chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. He believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers.

“I really feel like my problem isn’t piracy,” Mr. Doctorow said. “It’s obscurity.”

With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com

The Chronicle: Daily news: 04/04/2002 -- 02

 The Chronicle: Daily news: 04/04/2002 -- 02

New Software Blocks Trades of Music and Video Files Outside the Campus Network

By SCOTT CARLSON

Call it diet KaZaA -- plenty of file-sharing power, less bandwidth hassle.

A new file-sharing program called Phynd is burrowing in at a handful of

universities, including the University of Connecticut, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Unlike KaZaA and other file-sharing programs, which allow users to find and trade MP3 files or video files across the Internet, Phynd limits its searches and its users to computers on the network on which the program is running. University of Connecticut students, for example, won't find an MP3 on a computer in Illinois; and an MP3 hunter at the University of Chicago can't get access to the Phynd search engine at UConn.

Phynd's local orientation is good news for college computer-system officers and for students who want to get a quicker MP3 fix. File sharing can clog an institution's connection to the Internet, forcing activity to a near halt. But many internal campus networks are significantly more robust than their Internet connections.

Paul Kobulnicky, vice chancellor for information services at Connecticut, calls Phynd an "interesting adaptation" in the ever-evolving world of file sharing. MP3-hungry students often dodge university-imposed bandwidth restrictions to get digitized music and video. "What you're finding is that kids are aware of the effect that they are having on local networks, but they are also aware of what we are doing to control it," Mr. Kolbulnicky says. "Whatever it is they want to share, they've realized that they can share it more effectively if they localize it."

Brent Holden, a junior and computer-engineering major, set up a Phynd server "as a hobby" in his dormitory room at UConn. According to statistics on the Phynd page, about 350,000 searches for MP3 files have been performed through Mr. Holden's server since late February. By comparison, the Phynd server at the Rochester Institute of Technology has performed about 17,000 searches.

"I didn't mean for it to get as popular as it did," Mr. Holden says.

The University of Connecticut shut down Mr. Holden's server for a few days to study the situation, then allowed it to go back up. Mr. Kobulnicky says that servers are allowed to exist at the university if they don't serve material to users outside of the network. The rule is meant to thwart use of the university network for commercial ventures. He says people often run servers inside the network for clearly educational purposes.

Although Phynd's local orientation makes it easier on an institution's Internet connection than other file-sharing programs, it's unclear whether that makes the program more acceptable from a legal perspective.

"It's a totally different legal realm when you're talking about a local-area network as opposed to the entire Internet," Mr. Holden asserts. Because you might know the person who's downloading an MP3 off your computer, he says, "the rules are a little different."

"It's still peer-to-peer file sharing, but it could be the friend right across the hall from you or another person in your dorm," he says.

Brendan P. Conte, one of Phynd's developers, agrees. "The whole legal issue, as I interpret it, is opening sharing to everyone," says Mr. Conte, a senior majoring in computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "At least that's what I'm hoping," he adds. Mr. Conte says that there is a dormant portion of the Phynd program that will support off-campus sharing, "but if you enable it, you're going to be liable for what happens."

However, not everyone is so sure that keeping sharing local makes it legal. "Our institution's position is that sharing is sharing, and if it's illegal at any point it's illegal at all points," Mr. Kobulnicky says. The exclusive nature of Phynd "raises a specter that bothers me," he says, because it doesn't allow copyright owners to see the use and availability of their material on the network. He wonders if that opens up universities to different kinds of lawsuits than they have faced as a result of earlier file-sharing activity.

"I kind of like having the rights owner being able to poke around and find violations," Mr. Kobulnicky adds. "That way, the rights owner isn't wondering what kind of violations are going on inside my operation."

The Recording Industry Association of America also disapproves of Phynd. In a statement, Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the recording industry, said "the software appears to facilitate the unauthorized copying and distribution of music and other protected content."

"We find this extremely disturbing -- simply restricting this kind of file sharing to a particular network does not make it any less wrong. We would hope that the faculty of the university, who understand the value of protecting copyrighted works, would help put a stop to this. We will discuss this and decide what the best follow-up course of action is."

---

The Chronicle: Daily news: 04/04/2002 -- 02

Pirate Bay Case on Its Way to the Court of Appeal - PC World

Pirate Bay Case on Its Way to the Court of Appeal - PC World 

Pirate Bay Case on Its Way to the Court of Appeal

Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service

A lawyer for one of the defendants in the Pirate Bay case has already filed an appeal against the guilty verdict handed down by a Stockholm court on Friday, and lawyers for the other three defendants are gearing up to do the same.

The district court received an appeal on Friday on behalf of Carl Lundström, a spokeswoman at the court said.

Lundström was sentenced to a year in prison, like the other three defendants Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Peter Sunde. The court also ordered the four jointly to pay around 30 million Swedish kronor (US$3.6 million) in damages.

The appeal was filed quickly to make a statement about how wrong the sentence is, according to Stefan Jevinger, one of Lundström's two lawyers.

There are a number of things wrong with the sentence, according to the written appeal. For example, the appeal claims that in its grounds for the decision the district court wrote that it hadn't been shown that Lundström knew about the main crime -- yet he was still sentenced for being an accessory to crimes against copyright law. The appeal maintains that you can't be sentenced as accessory to a crime you don't know about.

The lawyers for the other three defendants have until May 8 to file their appeals. The prosecutor then has a week to respond, and then the case will be forwarded from the district court to the court of appeal.

Jonas Nilsson, who represents Neij, is aiming to file an appeal this week or next, and Ola Salomonsson, who represents Warg, said he will file an appeal before the deadline. Peter Althin, Sunde's lawyer, wasn't available to comment, but Sunde has made it clear he wants to appeal.

Nilsson expects the appeal will be heard in the first half of next year.

That timeline sounds reasonable, according to Salomonsson. "This is a bit more complicated than your ordinary bank robbery, and therefore it will take time," he said.

While all this takes place, The Pirate Bay site will continue to live on, according to Sunde.

Pirate Bay Case on Its Way to the Court of Appeal - PC World