It's probably irrational, but Academia.edu's domain really annoys me - I dislike a company using a .edu domain. It feels deceptive, in some way.
Come to think of it, implicitly calling for a boycott of another company while simultaneously trying to bootstrap a business based on violating that company's license terms feels pretty slimy too.
Is pretty slimy to misrepresent Academia.edu's business.
If they were trying to bootstrap a business based on violating Elsevier's licence terms, then why have they complied with Elsevier's requests to take down content?
If their business is based on violating the licence to that content then removing that content would remove their business, and this might be true if all scientific papers had to be published through Elsevier which would mean that a service like this then would not be able to operate without violating those terms, however that is quite clearly not the case.
You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for all Member Content that you make available through the Site or Services. Accordingly, you represent and warrant that: (i) you either are the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content that you make available through the Site or Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary to grant to Academia.edu the rights in such Member Content, as contemplated under these Terms; and (ii) neither the Member Content nor your posting, uploading, publication, submission or transmittal of the Member Content or Academia.edu’s use of the Member Content (or any portion thereof) on, through or by means of the Site or Services will infringe, misappropriate or violate a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy, or result in the violation of any applicable law or regulation.
I'm not sure why you're quoting standard boilerplate at me (as if any site with UGC would say the opposite of what you quoted), but I was just going by their official statement, which is rather hostile.
It does violate expectations, in part because it violates the stated rules of the .edu registrar, and therefore what people expect to find under .edu. But prior to 2001 there was no formal enforcement, and a grandfather clause applies to domains registered up through late 2001. Academia.edu seems to fall in that category, even though the company and site themselves weren't started until after the rule change. Presumably someone was sitting on the domain for a future use. Not sure if they bought it, or the founder was sitting on it for years. Since 2006, transferring grandfathered .edu domains is also prohibited, but it could've been sold in the 2001-06 window.
Ah right, the ol' shell-company trick. If you buy control of an LLC without dissolving or merging it, that's not a "transfer" of the assets owned by the LLC. Useful for .edu domains; also useful for avoiding re-assessment of California real property under Proposition 13, among many other convenient uses.
Yup, IIRC the .edu domain is for universities only, but having gone to a small private school in SV, one of the parents registered the school's name under the .edu TLD and donated it to the school. I'm sure there are many elementary/middle/high schools that have .edu domains for similar reasons.
Specifically the .edu TLD is currently suppose to only be for accredited (recognized by the U.S. Dept. of Education) post-secondary education. So universities such as Cambridge do not have .edu domains.
I'm not terribly familiar with Academia.edu and how it operates, but from reading the article and a cursory review of their website, it seems that the papers it hosts are meant to be submitted by the authors themselves.
How is it slimy for Academia.edu to operate under the assumption that its contributors retain the right to publish their own work on the site? Or am I missing something about their business model?
If I remember correctly Elsevier's rules, in case the article is from a subscription-based journal (non-open access) they retain copyright to the final published peer-reviewed & formatted article. The author is allowed to share their final published paper only in a 'scholarly' context, which seems to mean anything but mass dissemination; you're allowed to share it with your peers privately, but not post it on your site for example. I've just re-checked and it seems this rule is still enforced: http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-re...
OK, but to be fair, this seems to be slimy behavior on the part of Elsevier, not Academia.edu. Why should academics give up self-publishing rights just to go through peer review and get published?
Because, before the internet was widespread and used for distribution, the only way to get your research out was to be published in journals. Part of this deal involves handing over the rights to your paper to the publishers. This is pretty standard procedure: JK Rowling isn't going to be going giving rights to penguin books for the Harry potter books while she has a contract whereby Bloomberg publish the books currently, it's a similar idea.
Additionaly, the measure of an academics success is based on his (or her) citations, and if your citations are from "website of some guy", nobody is going to take you seriously. It's a vicious circle, and the whole system needs reforming, however the thing is, conferences such as SIGGRAPH, FOCS, INFOCOM etc etc all play an important role, that they offer peer reviewing, and you can guarantee quality (if something is published in SIGGRAPH, then you can normally rely on it). Until there are viable alternatives, which are accepted and can ensure that the quality of the articles appearing is of a high enough quality, this isn't going to change.
How is it slimy for Academia.edu to operate under the assumption that its contributors retain the right to publish their own work on the site?
Company X is doing something bad.
Company Y is started, in part, to circumvent the bad stuff about Company X. They wage a big PR campaign and take in millions in private funding despite knowing that they have no legal right to circumvent the bad stuff about Company X.
Seems slimy to me, even though I agree Company X sucks.
Come to think of it, implicitly calling for a boycott of another company while simultaneously trying to bootstrap a business based on violating that company's license terms feels pretty slimy too.