Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A quick MN note

A quick MN note



Still feeling the disquiet, and thought I should point readers to this article at Inside Higher Ed and a post over at Digital Medievalist.

What I'm finding really interesting is how this is playing out. The internet is a wonderful place. I love it. But I think we often forget about the ramifications of how internet communication works. I fully believe that there would have been no story for IHE to write had the MN folks just said that they had been remiss -- or even hadn't realized that people had issues with their policies -- and agreed to start attributing their sources carefully. But the internet is also a weird place. If you make assertions that might be challenged, you can bet that someone will challenge them on their blog.


Update: I have some more thoughts to add to this, in part due to some things unearthed by a colleague, in part due to my thoughts on what I see as MN's rather inadequate response, which to me says, "Fuck you."

3 comments:

theswain said...

I've had an issue about this myself. They used to, it seems to me, post the sources, and then stopped doing so.

On the other hand, there's been a site that has been around longer that does post news, CFPs, conference announcements etc that does in fact post the sources. Just sayin'.

Another Damned Medievalist said...

Larry -- that's my next post! (well, my next post on MN)

Anonymous said...

I don't see why any hand-wringing about this site should even be necessary. MN is wrong. What they're doing is unethical and illegal. Besides going after them, medievalists should not accept "convenience" over ethical behavior, even if there was no such thing as copyright in the Middle Ages.