Regardless of the John Cook data, IP issues, what they imply about the consensus on anthropogenic climate change and where the truth is, the legalistic heavy-handedness demonstrated by the University of Queensland to Brandon Shollenberger is...unnecessary and troubling.
Despite their threats against merely reproducing the cease and desist letter, Shollenberger went ahead and published it, and good for him. The letter is clearly of public and journalistic interest, so I've put a copy up at my Climate Document Storehouse, which maybe someday will be renamed The Repository of Wayward and Forbidden Documents. IMO, the letter deserves other mirrors as well.
7 comments:
This looks like a pretty standard cease and desist to me. If the university did not assert its rights it would leave itself wide open to claims from third parties.
Of course, in the game of Climateball, all moves are considered nefarious.
John Samuel,
So the study can be tweeted by the President's twitter account yet data is not available to assess how the study handled rater bias.
This is plain and simple obstructionism and a counter productive way of building trust in the general public that research on one of the most important questions of our time is being conducted objectively and competently.
"This looks like a pretty standard cease and desist to me"
Is it really standard to claim copyright on a cease and desist letter and threaten to sue over the revelation of its contents?
(I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what is standard but that seems ridiculous on its face. Looking for an accurate answer.)
Kudos to you, David, for posting this. It's nice to see the idea of standing up for principles of good faith, even in the midst of an intellectual disagreement, is not completely dead. It's sad that so many have abandoned this level of common decency.
Cook et al replicates about a half dozen other results. It isn't news.
Hacking is an offence. The university is obliged to defend itself.
Have a look at the study's data here, http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=home.
How can it be hacking if any trawling bot had free access to it?
It's hacking if you don't have authorisation.
Just because I leave my front door or my car unlocked does not mean you have right of entry - and certainly no right to poke around.
Very common stuff in letters from lawyers. The fact that this appears something or other is a marker of not very much
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