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Originally Posted by tompe
Copyright has nearly nothing to do with scientific innovation. So what are you talking about? Are you confusing copyright and patents?
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Copyright covers scientific reports & research as well; it's supposed to encourage them by letting scientists know their time won't be wasted & they can sell their analyses.
While use of someone else's facts is covered by fair use, reprinting entire reports or books is not. (Someone could spend years putting together a biography of Jimi Hendrix; while the bare facts aren't copyrightable, the narrative that puts them together is. And someone could run tests on depleted uranium to find out how to handle it safely; while the charts are likely to be grabbed by anyone, the description of the tests and the detailed conclusions are covered by copyright.)
How copyright interacts with scientific & academic research is a bit of a mess; separating the creative format from the raw data is complicated. But there are indeed hundreds of scientific journals that don't allow their articles to be copied around freely.
More sharing would allow more research--but potentially discourage publication; why should a researcher publish widely when he could publish just in his university for the same amount of pay?