this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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The asking makes it legal if I recall correctly.
They can't host a site with all their articles/papers/research, but if anyone asks for a single copy, they can provide it at their discretion.
And since they don't make any money either way, most provide it and are happy to do so.
You mean asking the publisher?
When you publish an academic paper, the journal/publisher makes you sign a transfer-of-copyright-thing. For example, that meant I could not publish my own papers as a part of my thesis. I had to ask the journals for permission to do that. Depending on how that transfer-agreement is formulated (and I imagine every publisher have a different one), an author giving away a paper they authored to someone on twitter or wherever may not be allowed. Only if you'd ask the publisher and get an ok.
It depends. Some publishers ask the authors to transfer copyright. Others don't. Even for the ones that do, the pre-print still belongs to the authors.
What's more likely?
You don't understand the exact details of this?
Or a metric shit ton of published academics are flagrantly violating copyright law and openly encouraging people to do it?
I can easily say that every academic I know and have as friends, which is all but two people, have surely "flagrantly violated copyright law". I have no doubt. They have even asked me for help doing it. I can also tell you that none of those have ever read one of those copyright transfers. I did, once, but I do not understand law-speak and do not remember what it said. I just know that my university had that as a policy -- because of lawyers -- what we had to do to redistribute our articles. That is also why I had a "may not" in my comment and could only refer to anecdotes, because, surprise, I do not understand the exact details about this. But you know this, because that was in my comment.
Not generally. There may be fair use exceptions allowing the sharing in some situations (depending on jurisdiction) or the publisher/owner may allow it as part of the licensing contract. But I don't know in what jurisdiction/under what contract, it would be legal to copy something just because some random person asked.