Diego Gómez: Imprisoned for sharing
I got word via the Electronic Frontier Foundation about an act of injustice happening to a person for doing… Not only what I do day to day, but what I promote and believe to be right: Sharing academic articles.
Diego is a Colombian, working towards his Masters degree on conservation and biodiversity in Costa Rica. He is now facing up to eight years imprisonment for… Sharing a scholarly article he did not author on Scribd.
Many people lack the knowledge and skills to properly set up a venue to share their articles with people they know. Many people will hope for the best and expect academic publishers to be fundamentally good, not to send legal threats just for the simple, noncommercial act of sharing knowledge. Sharing knowledge is fundamental for science to grow, for knowledge to rise. Besides, most scholarly studies are funded by public money, and as the saying goes, they should benefit the public. And the public is everybody, is all of us.
And yes, if this sounds in any way like what drove Aaron Swartz to his sad suicide early this year… It is exactly the same thing. Thankfully (although, sadly, after the sad fact), thousands of people strongly stood on Aaron’s side on that demand. Please sign the EFF petition to help Diego, share this, and try to spread the word on the real world needs for Open Access mandates for academics!
Some links with further information:
- Diego's own account on the matter in Compartir no es delito</li>
- Why are we prosecuting students for sharing knowledge? (Timothy Vollmer, on Creative Commons' weblog)
- Science is not a crime (David R. Koepsell, Center for Inquiry)
- Fuller story on the EFF
Comments
Luis Cabrera 2014-10-15 20:27:00
There has to be something else
My point of view
He has done something else against someone important like a politician, drug dealer, police officer or so.
I want but I just can not belive he is 100% innocent. Sorry.