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by kragen
5447 days ago
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I was rebutting a factual claim ("Most public libraries have relationships with JSTOR that allow members to access the articles online"), not a normative one. An analogous factual claim might be that most Zimbabweans drive Mercedes. Even without having access to Mercedes's sales figures by nation, that ought to appear unlikely to you? |
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My point was: your argument seems to be based on refuting the argument that the JSTOR subscription is not expensive for the average library because it is only about one yearly salary of the average rank-and-file employee, by saying that that only holds for the libraries in the US (maybe some parts of Europe, but let's say the US for the sake of this argument), and that in many other countries salaries are lower and therefor the relative cost of a JSTOR subscription higher.
So, my (perhaps naive) interpretation of this is that your ulterior argument is that JSTOR is too expensive for many libraries outside of the US, and that they therefore don't have access to its contents.
I further deduce from that, from the context in which you bring it up, is that you don't find it a problem that people take the content from JSTOR and redistribute it to people who don't have easy access to libraries who do have a subscription. Now I'll grant that this is a fairly big leap to make, and maybe you're not holding that position; but within the given context (of people arguing pro and con the actions of the Reddit guy what's-his-name), I think it's not unreasonable of me to assume so, either.
So, to close the circle, my 'question' was (but of course it is a 'question' that is, in the end, a way of stating my position in the discussion...) if it is reasonable to hold that when something is too expensive for people, it is OK to circumvent the rights holders' restrictions on the use of something. (I'm deliberately being vague on issues like 'moral ought' vs 'legal ought', if JSTOR really has a common-law variation of a database right on their collection, jurisdiction etc. - I don't really think they're important for the question at hand).