The Guerilla Open Access ManifestoAARON SWARTZ, OPEN ACCESS AND THE SHARING IMPERATIVEDELIVERED BY BEN HOCKENBERRY AT PHILOSOPHY DAY, ST. JOHN FISHER COLLEGE, 11/21/2013

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"We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.“(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)

Summarizing the Case Guest access to Library Databases through MIT’s Library

Batch download of what amounted to 4.8 million articles from JSTOR over the course of 3 months between 2010-2011; script “keepgrabbing.py”

JSTOR and MIT both took steps to block his laptop IP and MAC address

Computer hidden in a wiring closet, wired into the network and covered with a cardboard box

Caught accessing the laptop after covering face with a bicycle helmet to avoid camera capture

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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Who was Swartz? (in brief) Prodigy

Programmer

Scholar

Speaker

Activist/Hacktivist

Criminal?

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

Image by Fred Benenson, http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/3111021669/

Libraries and Swartz Guest access policies are not unusual, nor is IP authentication

Some sharing and copying is allowed under copyright law: first sale, fair use, interlibrary loan, archival

License terms for electronic resources govern use beyond the law

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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What were his motivations?We don’t know.

Code and analyze the corpus

Seed a dark archive or an index

Share with the world

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

Image by Fred Benenson, http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/3111021669/

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

“Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.”(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

“But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.”(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

"We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access."(https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto)

Libraries, Sharing and Open Access Libraries exist to share knowledge Gatekeeping or sharing? Libraries have engaged with OA to be on the latter side

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

Source: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php

Concerns about Open Access Maintenance of access/archival

systems

Confusion over “archivable” versions and version of record

Rank & Tenure policies

Future publishing opportunities (“the book deal”)

Changing model of peer-review

Potential unauthorized or uncredited reuse of the material for commercial or other purposes

Author-pays model may lead to sham journals/publishers(i.e. Bohannon’s sting in Science, Bealls’ Predatory List)

…and many more

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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“Guerilla OA:”Legitimate OA may not be able to go far enough. Legal change is slow

Legal system supports publishers and content creators

Clandestine actors can “liberate” content that can’t otherwise be freed

Is this what Swartz wanted to do with JSTOR? We don’t know.

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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“On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”(Brand, 1985, p. 49)

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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Some QuestionsCould the legitimate Open Access movement have gotten JSTOR to provide access to more than 4.5 million articles, without this case?

JSTOR is a non-profit. What fallout from other, more commercially-oriented, publishers and vendors will follow?

Do OA advocates have the same goals as copyright infringers (pirates)?

Can libraries strike a balance between gatekeeping and sharing?

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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ReferencesBarday, S. A. (2008). Punitive Damages, Remunerated Research, and the Legal Profession. Stanford Law Review, 61(3), 711.

Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s afraid of peer review? Science, 342(6154), 60–65. doi:10.1126/science.342.6154.60

Brand, S. (Ed.) (1985, May). “Keep designing:” How the information economy is being created and shaped by the hacker ethic. Whole Earth Review 46, p. 44-55. Retrieved from http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=2046

Feltren, E. (2013). Congratulations to the 2013 Recipients of the PAGI and Oakley Advocacy Awards. AALL Spectrum, 17, 8.

Kim, B. (2013, February 11). Aaron Swartz and Too-Comfortable Research Libraries. ACRL TechConnectBlog. Retrieved from http://acrl.ala.org/techconnect/?p=2823Klein, S. (2011, July 24). Aaron Swartz vs. United States. The Longest Now. Blog. Retrieved November 15, 2013, from https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/sj/2011/07/24/aaron-swartz-v-united-states/McDonald, A. and Cranor, L. (2008) The cost of reading privacy policies. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. Author’s version available at http://www.aleecia.com/authors-drafts/readingPolicyCost-AV.pdf

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ReferencesNewsClickin (2013, January 19). Aaron Swartz: The First Martyr of the Free Information Movement. (2013). Retrieved November 14, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg87SR0TRw4

Schwartz, J. (2009, February 13). An Effort to Upgrade a Court Archive System to Free and Easy. The New York Times, p. A16. New York.

Social Science Research Council (2011, March). Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. Retrieved from http://piracy.americanassembly.org/the-report/.

Stamos, A. (2013, January 12). The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s “Crime.” Unhandled Exception. Blog. Retrieved from http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/

Swartz, A. (2008). Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Retrieved from http://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto

See also:

The Aaron Swartz collection on the Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/aaronsw

JSTOR. (July 30, 2013). JSTOR Evidence in United States vs. Aaron Swartz. Retrieved from http://docs.jstor.org/

The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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