I was accused of Piracy today by a quite well-known scholar on web censorship issues. Not publicly though. In a previous post I gave a link to his book whose link I found through my friendfeed news flow. I admit it was my mistake to give link to a piratedly submitted copy of the book. It was unintentional and as soon as I learnt this, I deleted the link and apologized. These things happen and I am ready to correct my mistakes.
But the issue is this person whom I met once recently and to whom I continously gave links on censorship issues acted harshly and accused me of piracy in a series of email correspondence. I can be quite angry and responsive as my regular readers know but I opted to downplay his harsh manners because s/he is someone I actually respect for his good cause. In the last of his messages, he said he saw me only last Sunday on TV which is another sign of his uncivilized manners. We actually met and chatted a few weeks ago. This is how much he respects people around…
Secondly, I believe in Open Source and even if my books are piratedly uploaded in the web, I would just be happy. It is publisher’s duty to act if it likes but scholars should just be happy that their books are available and read… I leave scholarly publishers to find new business models but for scholars’ central source of income is not book sales and there is no need to be that angry for one’s books to be available online… Let me underline: These are my own ideas, I don’t upload any pirated material and I apologize for the mistake for what I have done. I wish a scholar were not judgemental and angry in his response…
p.s. It is not important who s/he is. I would rather not name it. However, from now on I broke all online and offline relations with him/her. No more links or no more offline organizational actions…
a good article on Open Source Discussion in academia:
CM Kelty, MMJ Fischer? – Cultural Anthropology, 2008
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