Matthew Brown wrote:
On 1/12/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
My point was not about permissions. It even
assumes that we will
receive all the permissions we want. It's about why we are better
suited to carry this material than Northwestern U. It's about the
ethics of a Borg-ism that indiscriminately vacuums up all the material
it can find.
I'm not sure that this is a matter of us thinking we're a better host
than Northwestern U for anyone else. It's us thinking that for our
own use, we're a better host than them, because having a local copy is
good. Because they might move their stuff in future or even take it
down. Lots of reasons that for our own purposes, taking our own copy
is useful.
Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on
an item by item basis. Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire
corpus of maps when we only have use for a few? Even the argument that
something might be taken down needs to be on a case by case basis, and
not base it on unfounded speculation. There are some sites, not major
universities, where this would be a worry. A site where there has been
no new activity in the last couple of years might be a cause for concern.
We all love to hate M*******t, partly because it dominates its
industry. We need to be conscious of not becoming resentfully referred
to as W*******a because of our dominance. I think that it's important
to view ourselves as a part of a community of websites developing free
access to information. That requires maintaining the respect of other
members of that community, and you don't do that by raiding their
efforts. The survival of a vision depends on sharing that vision, and
that cannot happen if our allied co-visionaries are put in a position
where they need to defend their efforts from the superpower on the block.
Ethical considerations rest upon forseeing the consequences of one's own
actions. Ethics are not governed by rules and laws, nor are they
imposed through fear of arbitrary ounishment. Ethics involves a
willingness to be at a disadvantage when it is the right thing to do.
Ec