Plataformas digitais colaborativas e o compartilhamento de materiais protegidos por direitos autorais: tensões entre materiais públicos e proprietários

Abstract

Technologies allow the creation of new spaces that have modified the way in which information is made available and circulated, in addition to new interaction practices among users. Among these new spaces is what is called in this research collaborative digital platforms that have as characteristics the collaboration between their users through the sharing of scientific materials or access passwords to paid databases. From this perspective, it is questioned how these collaborative digital platforms are structured and how they make materials available to their users. This research has the general objective of investigating the practices of sharing proprietary materials on collaborative digital platforms and their implications in relation to copyright. As specific objectives, the intention is to: reflect on the tension between public and proprietary materials in scientific communication in the context of open science; describe the currently existing alternative and/or flexible copyright licenses and how they have impacted the expansion of scientific communication in the context of open science; analyze whether the materials made available on collaborative digital platforms can be considered pirated materials; and discuss the issue of unauthorized sharing of materials and how this affects copyright issues. The methodology was supported by bibliographical research for the theoretical foundation of the research object, document analysis supported by the theory of document acts, with exploratory and descriptive objectives. The methodological procedures were carried out in four stages: bibliographic survey of the study's theoretical foundation; mapping of selected collaborative digital platforms, which are freely available on the internet; data collection based on visits to the websites of the collaborative digital platforms selected for the research; and data collection and processing. For this research, an analysis instrument was created in order to facilitate the analysis of collaborative digital platforms; this instrument is divided into four stages: identities of the collaborative digital platform, rules of use, guidelines for users and intellectual property. As results achieved, it was observed that collaborative digital platforms have expressive and heterogeneous collections that are freely available to their users; the materials are, in most cases, protected by copyright and freely available on the internet, constituting a practice of piracy; some of them have lawsuits for copyright infringement; have significant numbers of registered users; have global reach; they are, sometimes, well structured, having a business profile and can be considered highly profitable business models for their managers given their wide use, reach and expressiveness of users and available materials.