this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Not necessarily. They often do not own the copyright, so then it depends on fair use exceptions. The real owners have gone after authors, which may be the reason they don't make their articles downloadable by default.
The asking makes it legal if I recall correctly.
They can't host a site with all their articles/papers/research, but if anyone asks for a single copy, they can provide it at their discretion.
And since they don't make any money either way, most provide it and are happy to do so.
Not generally. There may be fair use exceptions allowing the sharing in some situations (depending on jurisdiction) or the publisher/owner may allow it as part of the licensing contract. But I don't know in what jurisdiction/under what contract, it would be legal to copy something just because some random person asked.
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Well, opinions on morality... I think the whole artificial paywalling should be abolished as being against the public interest. A large faction here seems to take a very right-wing view on property, including copyrights, and will always side with owner.
How would you turn your moral intuition into a general law?
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Tricky intuition. It would mean that authors could not transfer all rights. In that sense, it would limit what they can do with their output. Depending on how far you want to take this, it might not matter or it might not matter a lot. EG how much would you pay for the rights to an ebook if the author can always go and create a legal torrent?
Do you really think it should matter if the new owner is an individual or a corporation? If you only limit corporations, then the rights will simply be transferred to individuals.