Re: [h2o-discuss] Re: leaky theories

["Robert S. Thau" <rst@ai.mit.edu>]

James H. Johnston writes:
 >      The response was that scholarship is intellectual property
 > and that although professors may not be compensated well from
 > sales of their books, they are compensated through their
 > salaries.  Indeed, my respondent continued, the system of higher
 > education is built on the intellectual property of the faculty. 
 > Neither the universities nor the faculty want to give it away for
 > free over the Internet.
 >      Does anyone have a reply?

In some disciplines (computer science of all varieties and physics
both come to mind), it has become quite common for university-based
researchers (profs and grad students) to distribute preprints of
research papers on-line, without charge.  In fact, one of the larger
repositories of physics papers, at http://xxx.lanl.gov, was
established well before the widespread deployment of HTTP and HTML
(the papers are available in Postscript or DVI format), and, I
believe, roughly contemporaneously with Tim's original web browser
development at CERN.

It's also not very unusual, at places like MIT, to see course
materials (syllabi, problem sets, etc.) made available over the web,
with nothing in place restricting access to enrolled students (though
there may be some measure of security-through-obscurity here --- you
can't easily find the stuff unless you already know that it's
available, and have some idea where to look).

rst