The fact that you guys are even considering it as a legitimate problem, however, is encouraging.
I can hardly dare to propose any solution on this since, if you read my signature, I AM NOT AN IT PERSON. I always find it funny that people automatically assume that I'm one just because I use and advocate for Open Source software. I just wanted to find out if there was something out there to protect my rights (and those of thousands of scientific authors who are forced to work in a system that imposes the same mindset that closed source software companies impose).
The similarity of both (closed source companies and the academic establishment) is not a coincidence.
For instance, did you know that after a given research project is over, the "owners" of the project get to keep and hoard all the experimental data? Nobody else is allowed to look at the data if they want to come up with a different scientific approach; if you try, they will throw you in jail. If somebody else has a different idea for the same scientific problem, she will have to come up with a new project from scratch, with a new grant proposal. That means (for taxpayers) spending a few extra millions to produce the same data the previous guys have been hoarding under lock, just because the approach of the new guys to deal with such data is different. Whenever I've raised this problem in conferences/meetings, the response has ALWAYS been hostile; "intellectual property", I have been told.
There is probably a solution to protect the little man/woman, based on the principles of Open Source.

@dugan, before you continue teaching me how research works, or what an incompetent IT person I am (did you read my signature?), how about reading the following, so you can understand where I'm coming from?
Visiting Alexandre Grothendieck.
Don't forget to take your Ritalin; otherwise you'll miss everything after the first 10 words, and will surely come to the wrong conclusion about the page (and obviously about my post too).

Haven't gotten to that article yet, but what were these two quotes in response to?

If you feel that you've been misread, then you should take responsibility for that and try to communicate more clearly.

No surprise! The concept of intellectual property in all its forms is hostile to free and rational human thought, and those who live by it use aggressive hostility as their primary defense! "Intellectual property" must be maintained and practiced in secret because it cannot survive free and rational scrutiny!

I would suggest that the only way out of this mess is the abolition of ALL concept of intellectual property and the ultimate liberation of human thought from the various intellectual property priesthoods, such as the one you have encountered here.

Yes, that would certainly kill off the institutionalized flow of grant money and review as we now know it - but that is a good thing! It would be replaced by something much better, and free and "open"!

Then your original researcher would publish openly, it would be reviewed - AND ACKNOWLEDGED - openly, by anyone with an interest and knowledge of the subject, i.e. peers, and knowledge could then be advanced and built upon by ANYONE with an interest and understanding. New institutions would grow around that! Researchers and reviewers could actually become friends and colleagues based on mutual respect and admiration, instead of for-profit intellectual adversaries! And the miserable high priesthood of intellectual property could just go... wherever or whatever.

Intellectual property in all its forms is a harmful abomination on the backs of the human species, it must be abolished and avoided, not defended!

But your suggested solution is at odds with... itself! I think this is the source of your frustrations.

Consider that your problem is to "protect" the intellectual property of the original author, within a system which is built entirely on the idea of grabbing intellectual property for itself, administered and reviewed by individuals whose careers are ultimately driven by the "sale" via grants or tenure of whatever intellectual property they can amass and call their own. And you want to "protect" those poor innocents by "the principles of open source", which in the form of the ideals of FREEDOM of thought and information is the mortal enemy of intellectual property, ultimately within a venue (the legal system) which is itself a creature and tool of intellectual property law and overtly excludes non-legal arguments (i.e. principles of open source, whatever that is anyway)! Good luck!

If you are defending intellectual property "rights" then you are defending intellectual property law, and you must do that with intellectual property tools, i.e. intellectual property law itself, and so you should be looking for a legal solution, not a software solution, as others have said in so many words. Otherwise it will simply drive you crazy!

2 members found this post helpful.

Thanks, astrogeek.
I think you're making some very sensible points here. I can see the contradiction.
It's clear to me now that the problem is much deeper than I had initially thought.
I will go back to the drawing table and will give it more serious thought.
You're a wise person, and I really appreciate your input on this.

I am curious, who will test that it is the same "idea". Is this to be software? If so, who could even write something to guage ideas? And, if you were to write a paper in English, and I were to steal it and rewrite (same idea) in French, or Russian, how would this be caught?

I agree plagiarism is wrong but how would even a repository help? Who is to search it?

I hope my comments can get you to consider that the actual problem is not so much "unfair application" of the concepts of intellectual property, but rather it is the existence of the concept of intellectual property.

It is so deeply ingrained (literally institutionalized) in our society that it is difficult for most people to even consider that it should not be so! Instead we all run an endless treadmill attempting to find the correct balance or application and never seriously consider the actual nature of this particular beast!

The problem that you pose is just your personal trip around the exercise wheel!

The idea that one person can own (control) a thought, or a bit of knowledge, pattern, idea, etc., etc... to the exclusion of all other humans is an obscenity that should not be mentionable in polite company! Instead it has become an all encompassing restraining principle in our present society, one which operates to the detriment of all intelligence and advancement.

I referred to those who practice it as a priesthood because they operate like one, and the church of intellectual property is nothing different than a religion, and a very rich and powerful one at that! You just have to believe in it... reinforced by constant reminders that the sky would fall without it!

But a much more beautiful, forward-looking, innovative world of peace and knowledge, freely shared, exists outside its doors! Step out and look around! The sky won't really fall...

Thanks for your undeserved praise, blushingly accepted!

1 members found this post helpful.

it is unfortunately very frequent.


There is nothing to do about it in terms of law, since you gave them with your agreement kinda all rights (exaggeratedly said) while submitting your manuscript


It is like facebook, they own you !

Hi,

in many fields it is standard to submit to a preprint server at the same time (or before) submitting to a journal. See for example http://arxiv.org/

Evo2.

It sounds quite like "lowering taxes for rich people creates jobs"/"raising taxes on rich people means they can create less jobs for the poor" type of argument.

There's nothing wrong with the idea that a person can own/control the product of his work.

What's wrong, and what would really be detrimental to intelligence and advancement is the idea that people who actually produce intellectual works wouldn't have legal instruments to allow them to make a worthy profit from it. Instead, their work being "no one's creation", being "free" to generate profits only to those who already have superior financial resources, who wouldn't owe a dime to the "nobody" who made it all possible.

I'm not sure I understand the point? Who would you be showing this evidence to? The police?

Yes they stole the idea, and that sucks, and they're dickheads...but that's it, it's not illegal. You didn't patent the idea, you have no legal rights to it. You submitted it for publication, which means you forfeited your copyright ownership, and if the person just stole the idea and researched it on their own then there's no plagiarism at work either. If there's no legal wrong-doing, then what purpose does "evidence" serve?

I'm not sure you could even claim copyright over a research topic or idea anyway?

Ok, but people have to eat. That means they need to make money. If a person can't make money off of their work, then chances are they won't perform the work. Why would somebody spend days/weeks/years developing a new idea just to have somebody snatch it and create something sell-able from it the instant they tell the world? If you get rid of intellectual property, patents, copyright protection, etc., then you get rid of the incentive for innovation.

What you really need is for the world to change into a place where everybody (EVERYBODY) can live comfortably, with plenty of food, a roof over their heads, and all of the amenities they need for free (communism?), leaving individuals to pursue their interests solely for the good of society. Until that happens, you need IP, patents, copyrights, etc. in order to incentivize innovation.

The problem is that what constitutes plagiarism is completely subjective and full benefit of the doubt must be given to the offending party, which is not always the case. This means that people might be more reluctant to create content and propagate ideas because legal action can be used to leverage you into submission. This is especially true when megacorporations decide to pick on individuals. I'm not an expert on legal systems everywhere, but I know that this is a huge problem in the United States, because corporations can almost literally sue you for anything, no matter how absurd, and you are forced to settle because they have virtually unlimited funds, you (probably) do not. I recall hearing about genetically modified soy beans being patented by some company which are presumably so superior to normal soy beans that a small time farmer that doesn't use the modified ones stands absolutely no chance to compete because his costs are higher. Worse yet, this company has an absolute monopoly, so they have essentially complete power to set the prices for licenses which I took to believe are constantly rising. How do they know people are using them? They have a huge amount of investigators on their payroll whose sole job it is to check these farms for the patented soy beans. If any are found they are forced to pay for a license to use them on threat of legal action. Oh, did I tell you that the spores or whatever are carried by the wind and can (and do) land on farms that otherwise cultivate completely natural soy? It doesn't matter if it's a single beanstalk, you will be forced to pay for a license or you will go to court. You would probably win if you had an endless amount of money, but you will most likely go bankrupt before you even get to defend yourself. The only people that can fight back are big time celebrities and so on.

So, it is very dangerous. Yeah, you might argue that they have a right to patent their modified soy bean to protect their interests, after all if anybody could have used it without penalty from the get-go then maybe they would never have taken off as a company. Fair point I guess, I'm not really interested in discussing that, but the point is that they are not the underdog anymore. They are just another amoral company that is forcing people into submission, not unlike the mafia offering "protection." RMS has some interesting ideas about patents relating to software; I haven't watched the entire video yet but agree with the Free Software people or not, it's hard to argue that patents, while a good idea, are really fundamentally broken and can be quite disgusting. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiKRt3-FbM0

I made the exact same point. xri's response was to tell me that I read it wrong, that he was offended that I would teach him how research works, that I obviously thought that he was "one of the bad guys", and that I should take ritalin!

Seriously, xri, since you say you know nothing about IT, let me tell you what you need to know. What you need to know is: you need to come up with a working example. In IT and development, we have a special word for working examples. We call them "use cases", and we design solutions around solving them.

When it was pointed out that your examples did not work, you should have fixed them or come up with better ones. Instead, you acted offended and defensive and told me to change "months" to "time units" (which we both know doesn't work).