There’s an issue in stand-up comedy with joke stealing. Fair enough. If your art and main source of income is joke writing, and someone comes along and poaches your work, no es bueno. Rogan vs. Mencia is a good example of why joke stealing is a bad idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdugSUFbzws
In Mencia’s case, the guy is an obvious hack and is intentionally stealing material as a weird sort of power trip. He’s famous. You aren’t. He steals. Whatchoo gon’ do?
But what happens with other, grayer cases? What happens when two comics approach the same premise, and arrive at very similar punchlines organically without ever having heard each other’s work? — “I mean, I didn’t have to pee 2 minutes ago, but now that my house is in sight it’s like trying to block the flow of a fire hose” — hardee har har.
This post isn’t in the least bit about stand up comedy, but the comparison works well with a concept that I think most people, at some point, have dealt with: having an idea that you believe is original, only to find out that somebody beat you to the punch.
This happened to me recently.
Like most grad students, after learning about something new and exciting, I get enthralled with rants and ravings that are partially informed and branded with the unique, only-I-could-ever-think-up slants of opinion because my point of view is so special and great (early academia can get delusional and gross, but it’s funny how real it feels at the time).
The rant flavor of this past week for me was open access science sources, and how, with my sophistication and worldly knowledge, can’t ever be achieved properly without a catalyst. As I so confidently spelled it out to my friends, Netflix and iTunes are killing the TV/music scene with flying colors, but could never have done so without Napster. Napster, the thieving company that stole everybody’s work and made it free to the world, evolved, through litigation, tears, and cheque books, to a user-base subscription service that gives you almost everything you want for a wonderful price. Academic publishing, as I so boldly claimed, needs a Napster, to take the power from the glorified pimps known as publishers and give the process of truth making back to the masses. It’s only a matter of time.
In my defense, I uttered these statements 2 weeks before I saw the article, but the process has been happening since 2011. It’s called SciHub, and it’s the Napster of science publishing.
The only reason it was brought to light (to me) is that the woman who initiated the project is being sued by Elsavier. But this badass lady isn’t taking anybody’s shit, and is coming out swinging with accusations that Elsavier’s business model is illegal. Add the fact that she lives in Russia, and for reasons beyond my understanding, makes it very hard for Elsavier to collect finances if they win, she’s built herself a pretty sweet little castle.
This post rejects a cohesive topic, refuses to offer any insight other than I-told-you-so, and has almost nothing to do with social media. However, I felt like writing so I did just that.
–Microphone drop —
haha love the blog post